


Resistance: Futile

by Miles_Depth



Series: Resistance [2]
Category: Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:01:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 56,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miles_Depth/pseuds/Miles_Depth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follow the adventures of Fiona Fox and Miles Prower (Tails) in the years leading up to Julian Kintobor's (Robotnik) take over. In their quest for revenge and love the world slowly falls apart around them as they struggle to live with their decisions and find any promise of hope. Part II of the Resistance series takes place before Resistance chronologically.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Few Bad Men

**Author's Note:**

> The obligatory stuff:
> 
> None of the Sega & DiC characters are mine, I don't in any way claim that they are. They ideas and dialog however, are mine and not representative of Sega or DiC and their opinions or views.
> 
> Ideas and characters such as Jake are mine and I ask people to respect them. Again ideas and dialog in this story are mine and represent my work using copyrighted characters.
> 
> The Resistance series takes place in a fictional world of my own devise. I ignore most precedents in terms of world and setting provided by Archie, Sega or Dic in favor of creating my own. I wanted to write a story about how the characters would act in a war against Julian Kintobor (Robotnik) in a more familiar setting where humans are still part of every day life. The timeframe is set not that far into the future and yet should in many ways seem older (think 90's era infrastructure with tech from 100 years from now). Populations of people depending on their location will act differently. This is also true for characters based on their past and current situations. In short what I am saying is that people may seem OOC, but that is because I am interpreting how they would act given the world and scenarios I am putting them in. I don't like to build a world around predefined notions about characters because it forces too many things. All of the characters will retain their core personalities as you will see in the end, I have only given them the means to go beyond what they might do in a normal ff.
> 
> Futile is part two of the Resistance series. While it takes place before resistance chronologically, it would still be favorable to read it after Resistance. However, it should still stand on its own and be enjoyable by all. Readers of my first story can expect a lot of similarities between the two as well as plenty of sequences, items, and characters that appeared in the first. This story, much like Resistance, will have the first seven chapters focus on the main character, Fiona, before introducing the secondary character's, Tails, perspective.
> 
> Please do keep in mind this story while similar will also be different. I would greatly appreciate feedback and suggestions, especially if you feel like I am drifting too far away from what worked in the past. I know the story starts slow, but it should speed up pretty quick once a certain two tailed fox comes along.
> 
> Oddly enough a few weeks ago I noticed, for what ever reason, I started my FanFiction account 4 years ago New Years Day. I thought it would be fun to post the first chapter of this story on New Years for a bit of nostalgia.
> 
> Now I am going to stop writing about all of this nonsense and get on with the story.
> 
> Please enjoy…

The red vixen sat behind the steel composite bars staring out into blinding solitude. The walls were stained in a metallic white as the overhead lights washed out any remaining color. Day or night there was no reprieve from the brightness that bled through her eyelids. Fiona sighed deeply to herself as she slumped down to the floor. It had been days since she had been deposited in this prison and the only thing she could do to bide her time was think about how she had ended up in this predicament.

Kintobor and his goons had finally caught up with her. Even despite Miles best efforts, the will of the forces colluding against her was too much. It was as if her worst nightmares had come to life causing the feeling of helplessness to set in quickly, forcing the fox to retreat mentally form the world.

Since her capture, the vixen had been drug around with a black satin shroud over her head as men strong-armed her from place to place until they inevitably forced her into this room. The fact that they hadn't killed her yet suggested they had plans for her still, which didn't amuse her in the least. While she had come to know many twisted people in her life, it was clear Julian was perhaps the most well regarded in this facet, and sitting alive in one of his prisons did nothing to lift her spirits.

All Fiona had wanted was to be free, but the feelings were short lived. Ixis had looked after her, given her advice that served her far better than any other. However, for something as stupid as love she went against what he had taught her as well as her better judgment. The vixen had made room in her heart for another, but all it did was soften her. Tails had promised he would never let her go again, but here she sat well outside his reach. It didn't matter that she could here his shouts of sorrow as the van pulled away, he hadn't done what she had been doing her who life, and that was looking after her.

As the hours smashed into one another, Fiona traced her life backwards through time. It was an odd and somewhat futile endeavor to determine where everything had went wrong. There were so many places where just one tiny decision would have resulted in her sitting anywhere but here. The most obvious memories to target were those of the two tailed fox she still pined for in her dreams, but the problem went back further than that. Her earliest option to escape the clutches of Kintobor went back nearly ten years. The vixen had the misfortune of hearing just a few words that would forever change her outlook on life. The tiny seed of an idea given to her by a passing stranger had taken hold, guaranteeing her fate. With as much vividness as she could, Fiona retreated into her memories over a decade…

 

The young fox skipped along the sidewalk without a care in the world. This city was her playground and there was no one to tell her otherwise. People did their best to make her feel out of place, but she paid them no mind. Waltzing in the shadows of tall buildings and humans that pretended to be larger than life was what she did everyday.

Her boot found the stone she had been kicking along the city street, sending it further down the alley. Perhaps if a school would take her she could find the patience to sit down, but the institutions was just one more reminder that their kind was not welcome. Learning was not something she had an aversion to, but was rather almost an innate gift. Reading came easy, as did the knowledge that gained for doing so.

The fox spied a small group of humans at the far end of the one-way street. They were all older by a few years, perhaps thirteen and fourteen. Like a pack of hyenas, they circled their prey, in this case a much younger boy, prodding him until he lashed out. The kid had a lot of fight in him, but it did little to help against the children who were larger in both stature and years.

Fiona rarely took time to involve herself in the affairs of others, but she held a special place in her heart for those that took advantage of people weaker than themselves. Stepping between the kid and the other bullies, she inserted herself into the situation.

"Get out of here fox," the fattest one requested in a stern tone, "this doesn't have anything do with you?"

The vixen didn't move but instead clenched her fist, readying herself for the inevitable. Being raised in the city as a Mobian made her grow up all the more quickly. She took no issue with fighting, even against those bigger than herself. Her father had taught her that backing down only displays weakness, which is what people like those in front of her thrive on.

The kid she was protecting got back to his feet, wiping a small smearing of blood from his jaw. For a moment it felt as if she had a partner in crime when he took his spot next to her. Meanwhile the other boys exchanged uneasy glances that suggested that they were debating whether it was okay to hit a girl.

"She's just a Mobian," one of them pointed our as he stepped into a punch that was meant to knock her out.

Fiona simply sidestepped his attack, letting his arm sail by her muzzle. When his body came into reach she grabbed his shoulders and threw him hard into the wall behind her. Combined with the momentum already moving in that direction, the collision was not kind to him. He collapsed to the ground, eyes full of tears and he massaged fresh scrapes and bruises.

The others were on her in no time but it made no difference, she was faster, stronger, and smarter than they were. Grabbing one if their kicks, the fox left a bully with only one leg to stand on. The vixen refused to let go no matter how hard he tried to pull his foot away. Leading him around as she continued to do battle with her other arm was surprisingly simple.

Seeing the plight of his friends, the last remaining boy was not nearly as hasty with his choices. He threw quick jabs which Fiona turned aside. However, in the end the bully was just as stupid as the rest. All at once he sprinted towards her, threatening to tackle her to the ground. The fox quickly spun her one legged prisoner in his direction causing the two to crash into one another.

Ceasing his chance, the kid she had rescued leapt onto one their chests and let his fists fly. A bloodied lip and off color eye emerged before the third bully was able to pull him off. Fiona could appreciate what it meant to be smaller than your foe, and much like her, this kid seemed dead set on proving to them it meant nothing.

Despite his scrappiness the larger boy was still able to pin him against the brick wall before returning the black eye. When the bully went to hit him again, Fiona grabbed his fist as he cocked it back . Looking to see what his arm was hung up on, he found a gleeful smile and razor sharp canines protruding over her bottom lip. The smell of fear on him was so strong that Fiona was sure even a human would be able to smell it, but if not that, certainly the look on his face would be telling enough.

The vixen brought her own fist across his ugly mug, leaving something to remember her by. The boy promptly teetered for a moment as he stumbled backwards and onto the asphalt. Fiona looked down at the small gang with pity as they lay nearly on top of each other in a pile on the ground. Preying on the week was too often rewarded with success, but not today. The three goons picked themselves up and ran away all the while shouting for help as they looked over their shoulders to make sure they were not being followed.

Turning back to the kid she had saved, Fiona offered a paw. He stared at it with trepidation from where he sat on the pavement. She chuckled at him softly as she dawned a friendlier smile. If Fiona had been him, it would not have been fear that prevented her from reaching for an arm up, but rather pride. When he finally swallowed his, he clasped his hand around hers as she helped return him to his feet.

This kid wasn't so different from her, so she knew better than to expect a thank you.

"What did they want small stuff?" she asked playfully.

"I am taller than you!" he squeaked in response before calming himself. "Same as always, my lunch money."

"Lunch money?" Fiona asked curiously as she looked around at the absence of any schools in the vicinity.

"I am skipping," he continued, "It's stupid and I don't need it to do what I want to do."

A like minded individual indeed, she thought.

The two walked back toward the main road and down the littered sidewalk. The train station lay just out of view a few blocks away, and both seemed to gravitate toward it for fear of sticking around too long. Whether he enjoyed her company or not the fox was unable to tell, but he was smart enough not to leave her side lest the bullies return in force.

"Where do you live?" she asked.

"Upper east," came the boy's response as he nearly spat the answer with both pride and disgust.

"Me too," the vixen replied with an equally smug look.

Their home turf was the least forgiving the city had to offer. Those who lived there knew what it was, a slum, but with a first world twist. Nothing about where they lived was inspiring other than surviving another day. However, despite this tiny similarity between the two, it did not seem to change his opinion of her. It was obvious that he disliked her for what she was and not who she was.

The boy followed her below the streets surface and onto a subway platform. Standing at several arms lengths away for fear of being associated with a Mobian, he waited impatiently for the train with his arms crossed while he tapped his foot against the stone floor.

Fiona had already accepted that she was different. Mobians were few and far between in the cities despite the abundance of work. Ignoring the eyes that followed her on the street had become as easy as breathing. Looking past people's obvious aversions to her lack of a human appearance was slowly becoming just as easy.

"Don't talk much do you?" she asked, not bothering to change the direction of her gaze away from the steel tracks that ran through the tunnels.

It wasn't surprising to hear nothing but the clatter of the approaching train. When the doors opened she stepped inside followed shortly thereafter by the boy. The car was empty and he took the seat opposite of her, never once taking her out of his sight. She couldn't tell whether the boy trusted her or not. It seemed like a farfetched idea, yet here he sat across from her, almost engaging in a conversation.

"Thanks," he finally said, breaking the monotony of static noises that filled the air.

The kid was proud, but not so much so that it was beneath him to show gratefulness.

"Don't mention it."

"My mom says Mobian aren't supposed to be in the city," the boy continued as he swung his feet helplessly in the air while sitting in a chair meant for someone much taller.

"Did she?" Fiona asked trying to sound surprised.

"Mmhmm," he hummed in response, "she says animals have no place in Capital city. Not outside of the zoo anyway. But Julian is going to fix all of that."

Julian she said quietly to herself. The name had been plastered across billboards all over town. The round man pictured in them was running for presidents almost exclusively campaigning on the promise to rid the country of what he called 'vermin'. With men like him and the propaganda that followed, the city was fast becoming more dangerous for the Mobians every day.

"What do you think," the vixen asked not caring much for his mother's opinion on everything, "Should I only be allowed to live in a zoo?"

He wanted to dodge the question, but with no where to run he was left staring at the fox searching for words.

"I like animals," was the best he could do. It was a start at least. "But my mom says I am not supposed to because they killed my dad,"

"Why?" she asked now somewhat curious about his story.

"He was a dominion agent. Mom won't tell me anymore than that. I got his badge though. Wanna see?" he asked as with pride as he dug a brass badge out of his pocket. An iron fist doused in red was overlaid against the city's skyline. Fiona couldn't ever recall seeing a copper badge that looked like the one he had.

"My mom says after I grow up to be big and strong I will become the best dominion agent there ever was."

Fiona couldn't remember the last time her mother had anything positive to say about her. She was too busy to pay any mind to her own daughter. However the fox didn't hold that against her, without either of her parents and their time consuming jobs there would be no home for her to return to.

Feeling herself slide forward in her chair, Fiona put up a hand to brace herself as the Train slowed for its final stop. The boy promptly leapt to the floor and walked out into the station. He didn't seem to mind that she was tagging along. However, a few steps at his side were all it took to get them both into trouble.

"And what are you doing out of school so early young man!?" A voice asked from across the platform.

His face was drained of its color as he turned to greet a person that he obviously did not intend on running into.

"Is this filthy creature following you?" the woman asked as she approached the two of them.

"No ma," he answered politely.

The fox could see him trying to subtly wave her on, but she felt compelled to stay.

"Did she tell you to skip school? Are you friends with this beast?" his mother asked raising her voice with each new question.

"No ma, she saved me."

"Saved you? The only thing this dirty animal will do pollute your mind, that is if it doesn't get around to killing you first! How many times have I told you Jake? Do not talk to Mobians!"

"But the other boys were going to beat him up," Fiona finally interjected.

"How dare you even speak to me. My boy doesn't need help from the likes of you!"

Their charade was starting to gather onlookers. Travelers that should have already departed were stopping to watch as a mother lectured her child and belittled someone else's. Fiona knew better than to let this woman's ignorance affect her, but she could still feel a pressure in her chest building and the need to cry growing.

"My boy can handle himself just fine. Isn't that right Jake?"

The kid nodded his head with reluctance.

Fiona looked down at the ground now regretting her small act of kindness for the day. Is this the price of doing something good? She couldn't help but ask herself. Where is the reward in being selfless?

"What are you still doing here?!" the woman screamed. "Shoo!"

Looking back up at his mother, the vixen could detect nothing but hatred in both her gaze and voice. There was no argument to be won, because none could be had against someone so zealous. It would be like to talking with a gratified wall, the surface would always be hard and the words never change.

"I said go!" she yelled even louder while pointing at the stairs. "And don't you ever even so much as look at my boy again! You hear me!?"

Fiona wished she didn't. The fox turned and walked away down trodden with her tail dragging along the station floor. Never had she felt so depressed and embarrassed.

"And I thought rats were the worst part about the subways," she heard the woman say, still loud enough for the crowed to hear.

A single tear escaped the confines of her eyelashes and she was quick to whisk it away with a finger. No one had ever taken her presence so personally. However, her plight had not gone unnoticed and so it would seem that the animosity in the boy's mother brought out some good in others.

"Excuse me there little… little miss," a middle aged business man called out to her in a foreign accent as she headed towards the steps. "Are you okay?"

Fiona nodded her head, but she wasn't fooling anyone.

"Don't listen to her, keep your chin up. Not all of us share her contempt."

Another tear fell from her eye as she fought to keep her embarrassment at bay, but it only compounded upon itself until water flowed from both her eyes.

"Listen here little Mobian," he said in a soothing voice, trying to calm her. "If you want to go places in this city you are going to need to grow some thicker skin. Don't let a witch like that get to you or you won't make it anywhere. Let me let you in on a little secret, the only person that matters is you. No one else is going to look out for you, so the only person you can ever truly count on is yourself."

The vixen didn't care for his pity or his advice, no matter how sound. The only reason he even bothered to stop and speak with her was because he felt bad. Doing something out of guilt was almost as bad as doing nothing at all.

"I don't need your help," she snapped as she marched away defiantly, but it pained her to turn on someone who was only trying to comfort her. After a few steps she stopped and turned.

"No need to be sorry," the man said before she could utter the words, "I don't much care for pity either. Just remember what I said and who knows, perhaps we will run into each other again."

The vixen smiled in response. She recognized him from somewhere. He was a restaurant owner in a neighborhood a few blocks over from hers, but his name escaped her. Although his nightclub was hardly what brought in the cash, even she knew he was one of the best black market dealers in the city. The man in the sleek suit was notorious for his crude punishment on those who didn't pay up.

"Why are you bothering to help me?"

It was the man's turn to grin, "Because a small little fox like you is of very little threat to me, but perhaps a big threat to my enemies."

Fiona found herself wanting to prove he should be afraid, but if he was even half the person the stories made him out to be, it would likely be the last thing she ever did. She watched in silence as he boarded a train, tipping his hat to her as he did so.

Just another normal day," the fox told herself as she found the first step back to the surface.

The streets bustled with overloaded vans and a swath of pedestrian traffic. Horns blared as frustrated drivers did their best to navigate the crowded streets. Nothing about this part of town ever seemed to change. People were poor and the conditions in which they lived even poorer. Her family was no exception. Their apartment complex was nothing more than oversized drug den where every junky for miles came to get their fix.

Despite being isolated in the far reaches of the city's underbelly, there was no shortage of people. Even at a healthy two-mile walk from the closest train station, people still turned up in droves to escape the watchful eye of the Dominion. This part of town was nearly out of their grasp and crime, amongst other things, ran rampant in its absence.

The fox stepped over a man who had either passed out or died on her buildings steps before entering into the darkened hallways. Where glass once resided wood planks now covered the windows, making her journey up the stairs all the more interesting. Occasionally one of the addicts would mutter some inaudible words to her but most humans knew better than to bother her. It was not beneath her to scratch or bite.

The landlord had been kind enough to give them one of the bigger rooms tucked away in a far corner where things were quieter. Her parents, unlike many of the other tenants paid their rent. Fiona slid her key into the door and twisted until the deadbolt disengaged.

"Fi is that you, dear?" her father asked from the other room as she let herself in.

"How man times have I told you dad, I am not a deer," she answered back.

He always smiled when she said that, so much so that when she closed her eyes and see it on his face. Her father was sitting in his favorite chair only half watching the TV as he rested.

"What's wrong he asked?" curiously looking at the vixen's saddened face.

"Nothing," she sighed as she plopped herself down in his lap.

Running a paw through her fur, he massaged the back of her ears, "Don't want to talk about it?"

"I don't get it dad?" she proclaimed. "What's the point of helping someone when the only thing you get out of it is pain?"

He was smiling again, she could feel it even though her back was to him.

"I took the time to help this stupid little boy and the only thing it got me was publically humiliated."

"Sweetie, you shouldn't help people because you want something in return, you do it because it is the right thing to do. Now there is some little kid out there who might think more highly of Mobians in the future."

"Not as long as he is living with his mother," the young fox remarked. "That woman wouldn't even let me speak. She thinks we are the enemy."

Her father wasn't smiling anymore, "A fanatic. They are becoming more prolific. I am sorry you had to deal with her on your own."

"It's okay," she replied softly as her mother wandered into the room from the kitchen. "Someone gave me some advice."

"Oh yeah?"

"If I only worry about me then I wont ever have to be let down by anyone else. He told me it would be the only way I would make it anywhere in this city." Fiona said with very little pride.

"And who told you that?" her mom asked in a disappointed voice. "We Mobians need to stick together or we will never survive."

"A man who felt bad for me. He runs the Breaker Inn a few blocks over."

The look on both of her parent's faces went white with fear.

"Stay away from him!" her father said sternly.

"He was only trying to help," the vixen reasoned.

"Listen to your father, Fiona. That man may be open to working with Mobians, but he is far from forgiving or nice. There are good people and there are bad people, dear. He is most certainly a bad one."

"Promise me you will stay away from him," her father added.

Fiona nodded her head in defeat. She had never seen her parents so concerned.

"And speaking of bad people," her dad continued as he eyed the television.

It was the man from the posters, Julian. The round man in his pressed red suit was a sight to behold. His stature suggested he was made of stone and his voice only seemed to confirm it. His small wireframe spectacles covered bloodshot eyes that would guarantee him a victory in any staring contest. Kintobor stood in front of a podium delivering a speech in which he vowed to destroy the vermin infestation that plagued both the city and the country.

"Who is he dad?"

"Just another bad man," came a response laden with distaste and a subtle anger. "Just another bad man."


	2. Chapter 2

Fiona sat on the other side of the copper's desk, staring into the top of his forehead blankly, waiting for him to take his gaze away from the papers he was scribbling notes on.

"Are you okay?" he asked after noticing the young fox's trance.

The vixen didn't even have the heart to laugh to herself, "Am I supposed to be?" she asked almost curious as to whether she should be.

The man set down his pen and stared back at her. For a moment there was a glimpse of compassion, but it faded as quickly as it came on.

"I suppose not," came his response. "I don't know how anyone could be."

It was hardly the sympathy she deserved, leaving just his reluctance to admit he knew she was right.

"Do you want to run me through it again?" the copper asked as if reliving it might help her somehow.

Fiona rubbed the back of her head where a large bruise still throbbed on the inside of her skull. Each heartbeat caused her so many different types of pain she couldn't figure out which one hurt the most. The fox glanced across the room to where the source of her problems sat in a holding cell, covered in blood that was only partly his own. The chains that held him to the table raddled as shifted his weight uneasily in the chair.

"Will it help you get rid of him?"

The copper shrugged his shoulders as if he didn't care. They were never in the business of helping Mobians, even with something as heinous as this.

"Nothing seems to add up," the officer answered.

"And let me guess," Fiona began, "you don't believe my version of the story?"

The copper's initial lack of a response almost suggested his answer, but at least his words indicated he was willing to give her a chance.

"Haven't made up my mind yet."

The fox let out a long sigh as she stared out the office window, trying to find what little memories were left in her head from that morning. It had started off as what felt like the best day she had had in years. It was unusual for both of her parents to have the same day off, but when they did it actually felt like the young vulpine was part of family.

…

The three of them were walking back from an afternoon in the city, taking their time and enjoying each other's company. That however, for Fiona, meant she was three steps ahead of her parents in everything they did. It was one of the few times she actually acted her age, rushing out in front to show them all of the secrets she had discovered during the days she spent by herself. The fox had found all of the quietest spots in the park along with some of the best local markets that the average city goer would overlook.

Her parents walked hand in hand as they kept a watchful eye on her, never letting her stray too far, even though she ran free by herself every day. When they were able to be there for her, they made every effort to be the perfect mom and dad. Together the three of them made their way back into the slums that they called home. As they rounded the corner onto their street an run of the mill looking man came into view. He was already drunk, which given the part of town he was in was not uncommon. Each one of his steps was messier than the next and no matter how hard Fiona tried to avoid him, the man seemed intent on stumbling into her.

"Watch it mister," the young fox exclaimed as he nearly tripped over her.

"Me watch et?" he slurred as he brought the back of his hand across her muzzle. "Why don ya run back to your hole"

The sheer surprise of the attack sent her to the ground. Had she seen it coming it would have been easy to dodge, but never had a grown man threatened to hit her, let alone actually done so.

"Hey!" she heard her mother yell, "just what the hell do you think you are doing?"

The young fox was not about to let some low life drunk get the better of her. She sprung back to her feet, claws ready. However, she stopped on dime when she felt cold steel pressed against her nose. She had to look cross eyed down at the silver Beretta being aimed at her.

"an watcha think you're do'n?" the man answered back.

Fear was a new feeling for the fox, as she had yet to have a gun pulled on her. Adrenalin coursed through her veins as her mind searched for ways out of the situation while the rest of her remained frozen in terror. Fiona could hear the soft footsteps of her parents as they approached from behind. She wanted to call out to them for help, but the words were stuck in the bottom of her throat.

The man turned the weapon on them when he saw their advance, "nah another step."

The young vixen felt herself inching backwards while her enemy was distracted, but before she could slip out of his grasp he swung the weapon like a club. Her efforts to dodge it were futile and the butt of the gun found the back of her head. The pain was sharp, short and seemed to fade along with all of her other senses as she fell forward. The blackness of nothing enveloped her and much like when she was asleep, time seemed to stand still.

When she woke, it was to the grey concrete of the sidewalk in front of her apartment building. Fiona could feel a set of hands rolling her over and before long she was looking into the face of a paramedic who was prodding her with a stethoscope.

"This one is still alive," he shouted. "Looks like she has a nasty concussion though."

The man in blue coveralls snapped his fingers in front of her face, trying to get her attention, but her eyes kept wandering elsewhere.

"Look here," came his voice again as he waved a small flashlight across her face. "Do you know where you are?"

The fox nodded her head in response, but cut it short when it felt like every movement she made was causing her brain to bounce around inside her skull.

"What about your name, can you tell me that?"

"Fiona," she replied meekly only half sure that she was right.

Her vision drifted again until it found two white sheets on the concrete sidewalk. Each covered a body with a pool of blood underneath. It wasn't until she saw a tail protruding from one of the white cotton blankets did her mind begin to come alive. The vixen jumped upwards avoiding the grasp of the doctor trying to attend to her. She pushed forward until a copper noticed and grabbed her by the shoulder.

"Mom," she said softly, expecting her to respond. "Dad!" the fox called out even louder, but the bodies remained motionless.

The officer released his grip on her as she fell to the ground, tears streaming from her eyes. What happened? The fox asked herself, but no answers surfaced. This is my fault, she couldn't help but think. How the world could go from good to impossibly bad in so little time was lost on her. It was difficult to process, and the emotions building up inside were confusing to say the least.

Even through the prisms in her eyes, Fiona was able to recognize one familiar face. It was the man who had hit her. He was sitting in the back of an ambulance wrapped in a blanket, clothes splattered in blood with a fresh set of scars on his face. Slowly she returned to her feet as she locked eyes with the man.

"You," the vixen said through gritted teeth.

By the time the copper noticed where she was headed it was already too late, the fox was in a full sprint. The man looked on in fear as she ran towards him. There won't be anything left of you when I am done.

To perhaps every onlookers surprise the vixen had him on the ground in no time as she dragged him from where he sat. There was no shortage of rage for her to call on, and had the paramedic who had been treating her earlier not been so quick to pull her off, the man's injuries surely would have been made even worse.

"Get it off me," the guy screamed as if he were helpless.

It, she reiterated inside her head confirming that this was another one of the fabled fanatics.

"What are you do'n?" the doctor asked calmly as he pulled her off of him.

"You see," the man screamed while he pointed at her, "it's is crazy just like the rest of them."

"Crazy?!" Fiona responded in kind, "You killed them! You killed my mom and dad…"

The copper approached the fox with apprehension, "Just calm down."

"Calm down!" she yelled before filling her eyes with tears again. "How do you expect me to do that?"

No one answered her.

"Put her in the back of my car, I will take care of her," the detective said before returning to the sidewalk.

She had lost the will to fight and instead just sobbed into the paramedic's coveralls as he carried her to the back of a cruiser. The only people in the world who had ever shown her sympathy were dead, leaving her stranded in a place where no one seemed to care about her.

"I am sorry," the man whispered to her. "No one deserves this."

Fiona felt powerless. Even her own body seemed to be giving up its will to live. She didn't take the time to acknowledge the man's pity, because that's all it was and the fox wanted none of it. He set her down in the back of a musty car and shut the door. She watched as he returned to the scene, stopping mid stride to turn and check on her. For a moment she caught his stare and realized that perhaps he was truly sorry, yet it made little difference, it would not bring them back.

Minutes turned into hours and as much as she wanted to close her eyes and wake up from what was beginning to feel more and more like a bad dream, sleep wouldn't seem to take hold. Fiona's breath slowly fogged up the glass as she stared intently out the window trying to make sense of all the commotion happening around her. Her ears perked up when she saw the detective begin to question the man who had killed her parents.

"I already told ya, they came at me!" the murderer said loudly, as if yelling it would make it truer.

"But why?" the copper asked.

"Hell if I know. Have you taken a look around this place? They probably wanted to rob me blind."

"So you shot them?"

"Do you see this?" the man asked as he motioned to the scars on his face? "Do you see what they did to me? Yes I shot them! They would have killed me if I hadn't"

"And what about the little one?"

"What do you mean what about the little one? She was in on it too, probably trying to pick pocket me. Would have killed her too, but I thought she was dead already," he spat. "You should do her a favor and put her out of her misery."

The cop stared blankly back at the man, unsure of how to respond, "at what point did you pull the gun?"

"When I saws em walk'n up to me."

"And they just attacked you anyway?" the detective asked baffled as he scribbled notes down on small pad of paper.

The man was slow to respond realizing how silly what he had just said sounded, "I told ya they was crazy didn't I?"

"Several times in fact," the officer confirmed.

"Well what more do I need to tell you then? Wild animals don't belong in the city with us."

"Just so we are both clear on your story," the detective began, "A group of angry Mobians approached and threatened you. After brandishing your weapon you proceeded to incapacitate the youngest. The remaining two then attacked and you defended yourself."

"Sounds about right to me," the murder responded seemingly proud of himself. "So am I good to go?"

"No," the officer responded. "You discharged a weapon in city limits resulting in death, you get a free trip downtown regardless of what this was."

"But, but they were crazy,"

"You mentioned that already," the officer replied as he headed in Fiona's direction.

When he reached the car the copper opened the door to the driver seat and got in.

"How you do'n kid?" he asked almost sounding concerned.

She crossed her arms.

The detective rolled his eyes again, clearly not amused with any party involved.

"I can't help you unless you help me," he added.

"What do you need?" the vixen asked curiously.

"The truth," the detective requested as he pointed to the murderer, "he isn't giving it to me that's for sure."

"The truth," Fiona laughed. "He was drunk, couldn't even walk straight. After he tripped over me he pulled the gun and cold cocked me. Then my guess is he killed my parents when they tried to save me."

The fox tried to remain calm as the last words tumbled out of her mouth, but water again quickly flowed from her eyes.

"And did either you or your parents do anything to threaten him? Did you try to take anything from him?"

"No!" the vixen yelped as she directed the copper to their apartment building, "We were just on our way home. Besides, why would we? We were practically sitting on our front porch."

That detail had seemed to escape the detective initially as he flipped back through his notes.

"Is that good enough?" she asked through her sobbing.

"It's a start," the copper responded as he started the car and pulled away from the scene.

Fiona twisted herself around as she looked out the back window, saying her silent goodbyes to her parents. Somehow she knew it would be the last time she saw them, alive or dead. As fast as she had grown up, nothing had prepared her for this.

"Didn't someone see what happened?" she asked, turning to meet the officers' gaze through his rear view mirror.

"No one that wants to talk to a copper," he replied reluctantly. "Everyone scattered like cockroaches when I showed up. We don't exactly live in a stand up neighborhood."

Fiona leaned back into the worn leather seats, letting the cushions swallow her.

"Don't fall asleep kid," the officer nearly scolded her as he peered back through the mirror again, "not with that concussion of yours. You may not wake up again."

The vixen folded her arms unsure of what do besides watch the buildings pass by. Every waking moment seemed to be a new burden on her soul.

The precinct was old, run down, and filled with coppers that barely looked like they were able to stand up to get the donuts on the other side of the room. The detective sat her down on the other side of his desk while he began to fill out some paper work.

…

"And that's pretty much everything that I can remember," Fiona said as she took a look over at the clock which read a time much later in the night than when she had arrived.

The copper leaned back in his chair and inhaled deeply as he stared at her, "I believe you."

"Really?" the vixen responded almost in shock.

"For all the good it will do," he continued. "It doesn't matter how I write this up kid, when the news agencies get a hold of this he won't ever see the inside of a court room. This guy will be tried in the media and come out looking like a hero."

"But, but you just said you believed me, doesn't that mean…"

"It means we can charge him with murder, but I don't think it's going to stick."

"Why?"

"Because there are a lot of people who would probably like to see this guy walk, and they have money, lots of it. They can bribe the papers, judges, other coppers, you name it. You want things to go your way, you got to pay. Have you paid anyone recently?"

She shook her head.

"Me neither kid, but it doesn't mean we can't try," the detective said with a small smile.

Fiona wanted to display some optimism, but she only seemed content to turn and face the murderer in the room. She had become fixated on revenge, yet was still slightly unsure of how to obtain it.

"Don't worry about him, scum like that always gets what's com'n to them."

The fox finally found a wry little smile, "I know."

The door to the station burst open. A group of reporters was chasing after a large man in a tailored red suit. She recognized him from the papers and TV. He was their newly elected president, a man of the people. Yet she knew from her father's rants that people did not mean Mobians to him.

"Oh shit," the copper said under his breath, "they brought in the big guns on this one."

Fiona didn't bother to say anything, instead she just watched as the fat man corralled the reporters around him as he stood in front of the murder's holding cell.

"This is what is wrong in this country. No longer can a man defend himself against the hostile and feral creatures that we willingly allow to walk amongst us. Here this poor man sits, now scarred for life, with the threat of murder hanging above his head for doing nothing more than making this city safer. I vow to make sure people like this are rewarded rather than punished," Julian spoke confidently into the plethora of microphones and cameras that were being shoved into his face before turning his attention to the young fox.

"And you must be the little whelp that got away," he suggested as he approached her. "How unfortunate. No matter we will take care of that soon enough."

A flash bulb went off, capturing the fox's bewildered look. She rubbed her eyes in an effort to make the spots go away, but soon a cascade of sparks followed, bathing her in the camera's bright lights.

"Take care of what?" Fiona asked him when she was able to see again.

The man seemed alarmed that she even dared to speak to him. His nose curled up in disgust as he flinched backwards. The room filled with silence as everyone waited for a response.

"Why you, of course. I won't allow threats like you to live in my city," he proclaimed as he turned back to the reporters. "Even Mobians as young as this one pose a threat to our fine society. Left uninhibited they will spread like a cancer until we are dead."

He continued his rant as he waddled further into the station, no doubt looking for someone in charge. The crowed following him only seemed to grow as officers joined in the procession.

"Don't go running off kid," the detective said as he got up to follow them. "I am going to go see what we are up against."

Soon enough the fox found herself sitting alone; Kintobor's deep voice echoing down the hall as he continued his monologue. When she looked back over her shoulder Fiona found her friend right where he had been sitting before. His look grew uneasy as the two locked eyes for a moment. The vixen slid herself off her chair and grabbed the murderer's silver Beretta from the detective's desk. It was wrapped in an evidence bag, but she didn't care. The copper had made it clear enough that the law was not going to help her, so she was going to have to help herself. Perhaps the business man was right after all, the only one I can truly depend on is me.

The killer tugged at his cuffs as he tried to yank himself free from the table. He even yelled out for help, but no one was left to hear him. Fiona pulled up the chair across from him as she set the gun on the table in front of her, just out of his reach.

"Please," he begged, "don't do this."

"Do what?" she asked curiously.

"Kill me," the murder gulped. "I, I got a family."

"What a coincidence, so do I… oh wait someone killed them."

"Somebody help me! This bitch is going to kill me!" he screamed again.

Fiona could here every footstep in the next room, and not a single one was headed in her direction. Everyone was too concerned with the infamous Julian Kintobor to remember the small red fox whose parents had just been killed. Slowly the vixen picked the gun up and pointed it in his direction. She knew it was unloaded, but he didn't. It may have been the first time she held a gun, but it wasn't difficult to figure out which end went where.

"Why?" Fiona asked plainly.

"Why what?" he asked timidly.

"Why?" she asked again pulling the hammer back on the pistol.

The man began to break down in front of her. "I don't know," the murderer admitted looking slightly ashamed of himself, "because I could."

"And so now you get to walk out of here like nothing happened," Fiona said waving the gun around, "and me, well I don't know what they will do with me."

"I can tell you what they will do if you pull that trigger," he replied.

She smiled back at him with her newly found grin, "So what you're saying is I have nothing to lose?"

"No, no, no, that is not what I am saying. Please," he begged more.

"Or perhaps I should just put you out of your misery."

The look on his face went from pathetic to blank as if he had lost all hope. No doubt he never thought she had heard that. Fiona met his gaze as she stared down the sites of the gun.

The killer's eyes widened as hers narrowed, "Wait! Please don't do this, please!"

Click. The sound the empty weapon made was enough to make the man wet himself in fear. Fiona had yet to experience the pleasure of a grown man crying, but he made quite a show of it as he bawled into his shirt sleeve trying to dry his eyes and hide his face.

"Just remember," the vixen began as she tossed the Beretta onto the table, "that I won't forget you or what you did. We will see each other again and just like now, no will be around to hear you scream."

The man sat cowering in his chair as she left the room. The fox wanted to wait around to thank the detective that had taken the time to listen her story, but she had a feeling if she did she would never see the light of day again. Julian had made things quite clear on how he felt about her.

Fiona didn't bother give the murderer the satisfaction of looking back. Instead she made for the door while there was still no one around. Kintobor's words carried weight, so much so that she could still hear them from front steps of the building. Whether he was inspiring anyone the fox could not tell, but she did not want to find out.

Exiting into the midnight rain, the vixen shivered as her fur dampened. Going home was no longer an option for her. Soon enough the coppers would be searching for the 'whelp that got away'. The world no longer seemed fair. After all that had happened, the man responsible for killing her mother and father would be set free while she would be hunted like an animal. The city was turning its back on her and with little place left to go Fiona found herself heading towards the upper east side, but not to the apartment she called home.


	3. Man Hunt

"Fiona," the man said with some hesitation in his voice.

Ixis stood on the other side of his dream, or at least that is what he called it. On a make shift table in his office stood a tiny model of a grand casino spanning nearly an entire block of the Upper East Side. He eyed her carefully as she reached inside and plucked one of the pedestrians from the stairs leading up to its entrance. Carefully she replaced the person as if it was a real life in her hands. The smallest of things could set the man off, not the least of which was shattered dreams. He assured her that once it was done, nothing could stop him from running the city.

"Boss," the fox replied, doing her best to keep the fear at bay as she locked eyes with him.

"I am afraid this is going to be your last assignment," he replied as he returned to his perch behind his desk.

Naugus almost said the words as if they caused him some tiny amount of pain. To some extents the man had been like a father to her, not one that she wanted, but a father nonetheless. Although if she didn't know better he barely knew she existed beyond her purpose. The vixen was nothing more than a tool that sat biding its time until it was needed.

At first it was the obscure, tracking people, 'returning' 'lost' merchandise, and even the occasional negotiation. Naugus had seen fit to dig himself into every nefarious trade there was, and that meant dealing with the Resistance. The underground group of Mobians had gotten their hands on enough weapons for a small army, which is exactly what her boss wanted. "Empires aren't built on words," he would say to her before sending her off to parley with some Mobian gunrunner.

However, the notorious velvet red fox had slowly become somewhat of an urban legend, one that instilled fear into the hearts of Naugus' 'business' partners. He was not blind to this either. More than once the man had sent her to pay some poor soul a visit. The mere presence of the vulpine was often enough to cause her targets to cough up their payments plus a little interest.

Fiona was a ghost to most, including Ixis, coming and going as she pleased. Years ago she had foregone the denim jacket and kaki shorts she had shown up in and instead opted for something to help hide her amongst the shadows she now lived in. The fox stood in front of her boss, dressed head to toe in black. Those who did manage to catch glimpse of her often found something to look at. The leather pants she worse were so tight they often felt as if they might rip if she flexed a muscle too hard. While her jacket fit more loosely it was only because she left it unzipped, leaving her cotton black tank top visible. Between the deep cut V-neck shirt and her tail there was just enough red fur left noticeable to inform her enemies of who they were dealing with. The only thing that remained of her old life was the yellow ribbon that tied her hair back. Now in tatters, it served as a reminder of the younger fox she used to be.

"Last assignment?" she asked curiously, now concerned that she may have done something wrong.

Those who failed Naugus were not treated well and the rare few that dared to double cross him even worse. Vivid memories of seeing Ixis walk out of meat locker carrying a butcher's knife covered in blood still haunted her. The screams she had heard coming out of the freezer only moments before were so chilling that she had yet to find a way to describe them. The man's gaze had caught her as he left, and the hollowness behind his eyes only confirmed what she had always suspected; her boss had no soul. However, the fox knew that if she had done something wrong they wouldn't be having such peaceful conversation. Fiona had served him as loyally as she could, at his beck and call any hour of the day. It wasn't often that he turned to her, only when others had failed him. While she didn't like getting table scraps, the fox often felt a sense of pride completing the missions others couldn't. Ixis never thanked her, but instead gave her what she was due. The money rarely lasted as long as she would have liked, but it was work all the same.

"It's nothing personal, but it's becoming far too risky to keep a lose canon such as yourself around."

A loose canon, she thought, is that how he thinks of me. That assessment was crass to say the least. The vixen was often anything but. Cold and calculated at heart, everything she did had equal parts forethought and brutality in mind, something she thought her boss would appreciate. However, she didn't do things for him, she did them for her, after all that is what he had taught her to do. The city and its inhabitants made her what she was, merciless and menacing. The fox continued to stare at him waiting for an explanation.

"Perhaps you know what next week is?" he asked.

"My birthday," came her response, unsure if she should be flattered that he knew.

Ixis had never remembered it before, and she had a funny feeling that he wasn't about to start unless it suited him.

"Right you are, eighteen already and by far one of my hardest working employees."

"I don't understand," Fiona hesitated, "what does that have to do with anything?"

But before he could answer she remembered their new president. The fat man she had the fortune of meeting six years ago. Just as Naugus had predicted Mobian's were all but outlawed from the Major cities unless they could get the permits necessary to stay there. Those papers were hard to come by and almost always required an employer willing to vouch for the Mobian in question. At eighteen you either had your papers or you were target practice for the local coppers, that is if they were feeling kind enough to ask for them in the first place.

"If I keep you around," he continued, "your title on the registration form can't read 'hired gun' now can it?"

She shook her head in agreement.

"However, I am not the type of man to let an asset walk out the door, not when it has other applications."

She didn't like where this was going. As part of his empire Ixis had a dingy underground bar a few blocks over that catered to the cheap drunks and affluent Mobians who had managed to keep their homes in the city. If she worked there it would only be as eye candy and entertainment, and the fox assured herself that she had more pride than that.

"I am skipping everyone else with this one," he said as he pushed a file across the desk, "it is too personal. You are the only employee I have that has yet to disappoint me."

Inside the folder was a ransom note made from cut up newspaper clippings. It read nothing more than, If you want him back alive, pay up.

"No one extorts me!" Ixis said as he slammed a clenched fist into his desk.

"If you don't mind me asking, who is 'he'?"

Naugus gritted his teeth as he muttered, "my son."

Fiona had always known the man had family, but she had never seen them. They were mentioned only in passing whispers by other staff. A subject known to many as off limits, and with good reason. To the best of her knowledge he and the misses were no longer on good terms and she had up and left taking his son with her. Now it looks as if someone was trying to take advantage of that. This was the first time she was almost sure her boss was being sentimental.

"That whiney little brat of mine got himself in a very tight spot, no thanks to his bitch of a mother," he said fuming with rage.

After a few deep breaths he steadied himself as he continued, "this isn't about them, it's about me. When I am done with the clowns that took him, there won't be a person in this city that doesn't think at least three times before they fuck with me or anything or anyone that is mine."

The fox flipped to the next page in the dossier. It was a map with an X over an abandoned building in the warehouse district next to the river.

"Is this where the exchange is supposed to happen?"

"Yes," her boss replied coolly, "They want a rather large sum of money, but I don't intend on giving them a single credit."

"They?"

"Three lowlifes who don't have much common sense. They will rue the day they I entered their lives."

Fiona had little doubt of that.

"Anything else?"

"Expect them have a trick up their sleeve. They may be dumb, but they're not stupid. All I care about is my son. Get him back."

"You got it boss," she replied as she turned to leave.

"Fiona," Ixis said before the fox reached the door.

Turning back the man was dangling key from his wrinkly fingers, "You know how to drive right?"

When the occasion had called for it, she took the liberty of giving herself some lessons. Nothing about it seemed particularly difficult to understand except for why no one else on the road could seem to do it half as well as her.

"Sure," the vixen replied as she caught the keys.

"Not a scratch," the man said sternly. "There isn't a copper in the city that will pull you over in that."

"Why not?"

"Because it's mine. Now stop wasting time and go find my son."

Fiona nodded as she pocketed the keys trying to understand where the generosity was coming from. Ixis had given her exactly two things since she began working for him, money and a gun. It didn't take the man long to get over giving her one either, even despite his initial misgivings. She could still recall the sound of him pushing the synthetic Glock across his desk towards her as if it were yesterday.

"And try not to kill anyone. It's the only way I can continue to keep the coppers off your back. Papers or not they will put you in a hole and make you disappear if you're found within a hundred feet of a corpse."

"If they catch me," she said with a smile.

The fox still had yet to cross that bridge and had no intention of doing so today. Sure, she had gotten her paws dirty, but nothing so far as killing anyone. Of course that meant the vixen had to discount the people she handed over to Naugus, people she never saw again. Even if they are dead, you didn't kill them Fi, she told herself.

The black sedan was parked out back in the garage behind the hotel. Its windows were totally blacked out with chrome trimmings around the side. After that, there wasn't a distinctive mark on the car, not even a plate, which is perhaps what in and of itself made the vehicle so distinctive.

With a twist of her wrist, the car started promptly to life, purring as if it were happy to get the attention. Fiona ran her hand around the smooth leather steering wheel as she adjusted the mirrors. Luxury left her with an odd flutter in her stomach, but not one that she couldn't learn to like. The fox smiled with inordinate amount of content as she slowly pulled away, leaving the slums behind in style befitting of royalty. Thankfully the lazy overcast Sunday kept the traffic to a minimum letting her coast indolently over the bridge as if she wasn't in a hurry at all.

It was cooler down by the docks, it always was. Something about the moist air made the place taste like despair. A fog bank was just rolling in off the river when she pulled up, its grey billowy pillows skating across the water until they inevitably ran aground. The fox took a deep breath as she put the car in park. She could already feel the eyes preying at her, even inside the car.

That feeling rubbed the vixen the wrong way. She was the one used to doing the watching; being on the other side of the lens left her feeling exposed. Without a drop of fear in her complexion she reached for the handle and opened the door. The gravel crumbled underneath her feet as she made her way across the clearing. Warehouses such as this one were shady from the outside in. A loose coat of grey paint over the rusted siding was all the attention it had received in the last ten years, a perfect place to stash a kid for a couple of days.

Fiona put a paw on the man door and pushed it open as it creaked in complaint. The football field sized structure was empty save for a chair in the middle and two goons standing behind it. She approached, veins still flowing with ice.

"You got our money?" one of them called out.

The vixen didn't respond, instead she continued to walk, the solid sound of concrete now under her boots. Something didn't smell right, she could see two, but knew there were three.

"You hear me? You got our money?"

The lighting was shitty at best. The florescent bulbs were flickering like a bug zapper in a swamp. Condensation could do that in a place like this. The fox was barely able to make out their faces, which meant they certainly couldn't see hers. While each had a weapon at their side, neither made any attempt to spook her.

"Stop!" one of them yelled in a deep authoritative voice.

The vixen took her last step, finally satisfied with distance between her and the men with guns. Her objective lay between the three of them shivering in fear. The boy's torso was lashed to the back of a chair, his hands taped to his sides, and to top everything off a black shroud covered his heads to dull his senses and keep him trapped in the darkness of fear.

"The money," the thug on the left said curtly, "please."

"Why are there only two of you?" Fiona asked bluntly.

Upon hearing the female voice the pair exchanged looks as they took a step closer to her. Amidst the nervous footsteps the vixen's ear twitched as she found the breath of a third man. She smiled, letting a canine fall from her mouth. No longer did they have the advantage.

Whether it was her glowing eyes or sharp teeth, the men froze when they realized it was not a human approaching them.

"Shit," one of them muttered to the other, "that's the Red Shadow man."

Fiona enjoyed that nickname. Every once in a while she would catch whispers of it behind her back. The red furred fox that materialized from darkness was well known for a lot of things, and weakness was not one of them.

Before either of them could decide what to do with this new information Fiona pulled her gun and fired a shot into the air. A man screaming in pain quickly followed as he dropped his sawed off Remington from the shadowy rafters above. Without batting an eye she caught the clunky weapon in her off hand and proceeded to point it in her remaining enemies' directions.

As she stared them down, their less than acrobatic friend fell from his hiding spot, but not gracefully. When she finally took a peek at the man who was screaming bloody murder it was to find that the leg she hadn't shot was bent quite a few degrees in the wrong direction.

"Do you know who you're dealing with?" the fox asked as she took a step closer to securing the boy.

No one answered.

"Let him go and you get to walk away."

Neither of them looked happy about their predicament.

Doing her best to ignore the groaning man, Fiona advanced towards her target, keeping the two idiots that stood behind him in her sights The one on the right worked up the balls to shoulder his rifle. With two quick shots from her Glock the man fell over squirming in pain, clutching a bleeding shoulder.

"Your move cowboy," the vixen said with her wry little smile as she turned to the last of her enemies.

The thug nodded in agreement as he dropped his pistol to the ground. Fiona knew as soon as she saw him reach inside his pocket she should have shot him, but now it was too late.

"You know what this is?" he asked as he held out a small device.

Now the fox had to nod. She had seen remote detonators enough times to know the drill.

"Not another step or there won't be much left of that kid."

The trick to dealing with pricks like this was convincing them they were in fact the ones that had everything to lose.

"You go ahead and do that," Fiona replied as she walked past the boy, guns still trained on the maniac in question.

"I'll do it," he proclaimed, "I swear."

"I believe you," she replied even though she didn't. "Naugus only told me to come down here and make it plain that you were not getting any of his money. He didn't seem too concerned about the kid one way or the other."

She was now fifteen feet away and the beads of sweat forming on the thug's face began to show rather clearly.

"So I might urge you to take a look around at your friends, all of whom are still breathing for now. What does an intelligent man such as yourself think would happen next if you pressed that button?" the fox asked.

Fiona had learned long ago to play to people's egos. Always make them feel smart, and let them think they have some control even if they don't. Misdirection could work in so many ways. The man gulped as the fox rested the barrel of her new sawed off on his knee.

"What do you say I let you walk away?" she asked in a semi seductive voice. "All you have to do is drop that," the vixen continued as she motioned to the detonator.

He dropped it just like she thought he would. With a smile she flipped the shotgun around as if to offer it to him. When he reached for it she pulled back and swing it like a club. The low life crumpled to the ground unconscious leaving her alone with his two noisy partners that were still rolling around on the ground in pain.

After tossing the Remington and grabbing the detonator Fiona reached into his jacket pocket somewhat curious about the type of man that would kidnap a little kid, let alone strap him to a bomb. To her surprise her paws did not come up empty. A small badge encased in leather gleamed in the dull light. An iron red fist was affixed against a city's skyline. She had seen one of these before.

"Dominion?" she whispered to herself before pocketing the badge.

The boy was shaking uncontrollably and for that she couldn't blame him.

"Hold on kid," she said as she felt around for the knots that held him to the chair.

As her paws worked at the rope a screeching noise erupted from the far end of the warehouse as the large freight door slowly opened.

"Damn it," the fox swore as she grabbed the back of the seat and dragged it towards the door she had entered through.

Even if he was only twelve the human child weighed every bit as much as she did, which severely hampered her escape. Looking over her back as the chair legs grinded against the pavement floor she hoped for a glimpse of what she presumed were more enemies. Slowly the sliver of light grew as the large doors at the other end opened further, revealing some very troubling silhouettes. Reaching for the handle, the fox wasn't surprised to find it locked. Fiona jiggled it before putting two rounds into the bolt and throwing her weight against the solid metal door. Nothing budged and she was trapped, "like a rat," she muttered to herself.

The man in the middle of the entourage was clapping slowly as if to mock her efforts.

"Impressive," he called out, "but futile. Besides, you're forgetting something."

The mystery man forced a woman to the ground in front of him, putting a pistol to the back of her head. The fox had been confident in her ability to retrieve the boy safely, but she was quickly loosing that feeling. Who ever this guy was he had a lot more company than she could deal with. Six men in full armor stood at his side and if that wasn't enough there were two ten-foot tall robots accompanying them.

"I am sorry," the woman screamed. "Patrick, tell your father I am sorry."

"Mom," the child screamed through the black shroud.

Before Fiona could say a word, the man pulled the trigger on his gun. The shot echoed about the silent warehouse and even for a person who couldn't see, there was little question as to what just happened. This was a setup and both she and Naugus had walked right into it.

"Mom," the kid screamed again, this time through an uncontrollable sob.

Fiona froze for second as she relived a moment from her past; this was a pain the vixen understood. To be there right when some pathetic excuse for a criminal took the life of someone you loved was a terrible feeling. Being helpless and blind only made it worse.

"Give him back," the man commanded with a tone that implied there were zero alternatives.

The fox begged to differ, however. With a stern kick she shattered the chair and freed the boy who was now near lifeless with sorrow. In just second her free hand pried the c4 that was stuck to the bottom of the stool and crammed it into the door's handle. Ducking to the side, she shielded the kid, reached in her pocket, and squeezed the detonator.

The door flew from its hinges in a fiery explosion that shook the building. Once they realized the fox was about to make an escape they opened fire. Bullets filled the air, ripping holes in the cheap siding.

"Stop you idiots!" she heard one of them yell, "The boy needs to be alive."

The kid had gone limp, making it nearly impossible to get him outside. Just as she did, one of the mechs put a hole in the wall next to her big enough for a truck to drive through. What ever the things were they were new and they hit hard.

Fiona was done babying the youngster and promptly full on threw him into the passenger seat of the car. Jumping right over him, she didn't even bother to shut the door. The engine roared to life as she twisted the key with her foot already on the gas pedal. The rear tires kicked up dirt and gravel alike as they spun sending the car forward and snapping the side door shut.

The robots that had tagged along with her new friends were faster than she could have imagined. Slow to start, they quickly worked themselves up into sprint, crashing through the hole they had already created.

Circling back around onto the pavement Fiona headed for the main road, but not before one of the bots took another shot. Inside it had been loud enough, but outside the canon echoed for miles. The round nearly clipped the mirror on Ixis' car as it streaked by, colliding with a stationary forklift in front of her. The mangled vehicle flipped into her path forcing her to swerve onto a side street.

Glancing in her mirror for a second was all it took for her enemies to get the jump on her. One of the bots had managed to make its way around the buildings and walk out into the end of the road, blocking her way. The fox slammed on the breaks, bringing the car to a tire screeching halt. Fiona rammed the shifter into reverse and gunned it again, but just as she looked over her shoulder the bot that had been chasing her rounded the corner.

"Shit," she swore out loud as she spun the wheel in desperation.

The vehicle careened right through a paper-thin garage door and into another warehouse. The vixen didn't remove her foot from the gas pedal as she continued to smash through empty crate and support beams alike with the car's rear bumper.

Two more loud cracks erupted while all the windows in the building exploded simultaneously as two auto cannon rounds shredded what was left of the warehouse, sending debris in all directions. They were trying to bring the building down on top of her.

"I can't see anything," the kid screamed.

"Trust me when I say you don't want to," the fox barked back at him over the redlined V8.

When the car finally plowed through the wall on the other side of the warehouse, Fiona couldn't have been happier to put a dent in Naugus' car. Reaching up to the steering column she shifted back into drive and pointed the car towards the road. Just as she got it up to speed the bots struck again. This time, one of their rounds found an old crane stationed by the docks. Its supports popped under the explosive tension, sending everything above crashing down right in front of her and the only clean path out.

"You have got to be kidding me," the vixen shrieked at the top of her lungs as she swerved the car down another alley.

The only thing she was thankful for at this point was the fact that they wanted the kid alive. If not for that she would have had a front row seat to her first barbeque. Their only option was to try and trap the fox, but unfortunately for her they seemed to be succeeding.

One of the bots was closing fast, and the second it grabbed her car everything was over. As the sedan raced down the tiny street she was forced to weave amongst the big equipment the dock crews had left out over the weekend. The fox instinctively went for her Glock as she ripped the handbrake, forcing a one eighty. With her paw out the window, the vixen fired not at the ten foot tall mech, but at the run down truck all too conveniently filled with acetylene tanks she had just driven by. One shot, two shot, three shot, but still nothing.

"Damn it!" Fiona screamed as she fired a fourth.

The explosion was beyond spectacular, sending a fireball a hundred feet in the air. A shockwave rippled through the air shredding small objects adding to the shrapnel that pelted the bulletproof windshield. The heat nearly singed the fur on her arm as she pulled it back inside. Above all, the bot, or what was left of it, would no longer be a problem, leaving only its brother to torment her and the kid.

Now all she needed was a way out of this god-forsaken maze. Warehouse after warehouse streaked by as she looked for another street that would let her return to the rat infested city she called home.

"There," she said out loud as if it mattered. The boy sitting next to her still couldn't see a damn thing.

Turning hard onto another main road she could make out a chain link gate with a guardhouse up ahead. It wasn't ideal, but it would put up a lot less fight than what was chasing her in the rear view mirror. The remaining bot fired again, but the shot did nothing more than destroy the tiny shack next to the gate and remove part of the fence for her. The weight of her vehicle traveling in excess of a hundred miles per hour easily sailed through the aluminum wire gate and continued on it's way as if nothing were there to begin with.

All she had to do now was make it to the tunnel and she was home free. There was no chance in hell a bot like that would be able to maneuver in such a small space. With just two more turns the Estarax Tunnel willingly swallowed them up along with all the other vehicles on the road.

The noise of her car's engine running at full tilt hummed provocatively off the tiled ceiling as she careened past cars at such a speed they appeared only to be blurs. The mech on the other hand had already managed to step on a car, kicking it to the side only to run into another. Fiona breathed a large sigh of relief when she saw it disappear in the city's traffic.

"Are – are we there yet?" the brat had the nerve to ask after a few moments of silence.

The vixen couldn't think of anything polite to say, so instead hit the accelerator harder and let the car do the talking for her.

When she arrived back in the garage and turned the key, the engine promptly fell asleep with a hiss as if it had been pleading for a reprieve. Fiona finally reached over and removed the black satin shroud from Naugus' son's head. Tears were still rolling down rosy red cheeks and she almost couldn't help but feel bad for him.

"C'mon," she said as she tore the tape away from his hands, "let's go see your dad."

"No," came his response through a sniffle.

The vixen didn't feel like arguing, but she was willing to spare a few more moments for him to justify his case.

"No?" she replied as mother might to a two year old.

"No," he repeated with some hesitation, "He is a bad man, and a worse dad. He hasn't been there once for me."

"He was there today," Fiona reminded him.

"Only because it would hurt his pride. He didn't even try to save my mom…" the boy added before his words turned into sobs again.

The fox scooted him out of the car and marched him up to the building. For being only twelve he had oddly twisted view on the world, even if it was completely right. Luckily for her, the kid didn't fight. Maybe he knew there was no arguing with his father, or perhaps he had been paying attention enough to know that there would also be no arguing with her.

What Fiona would give for a reunion with her parents was indeterminable, but that didn't stop her from picturing it every day, and that went nothing like presenting Naugus with his son.

When Fiona walked into his office she tossed him the keys to his car back, "you might need to get it detailed."

The man's expression indicated he did not appreciate the humor in the matter.

"I did manage to find this though," Fiona said as she pulled the kid into the room.

"Good then I see everything went according to plan," Ixis replied.

The fox didn't quite know how to tell him that wasn't the case and perhaps the look on her muzzle said as much. However, the kid seemed rather content to tell him in detail for her.

"According to plan!" he yelled. "What kind of plans do you make up here? Ones that involve getting mom killed? Ones that involve having some stupid fox play chicken with guy holding the detonator to the bomb I am sitting on? Ones that involve me getting shot at?"

Naugus twirled the keys in his hand as he listened to his son's tirade, clearly unsure of how much of the story to believe. Turning back to Fiona he only said one word, "Explain."

"Explain what?" she nearly spat. "You're welcome by the way," the fox said curtly to the boy now sitting on his father's couch.

"Start with why he says my wife is dead."

"Because she is. It was a setup. Whoever it was didn't seem to care too much about her. They walked her in and executed her."

"Are you going to sit there and believe her dad?" the little brat had the nerve to suggest.

Ixis raised his hand to silence the boy with a look so stern it could have stopped a charging bull cold in its tracks. Fiona could hardly believe the words coming out of his mouth. The kid had the audacity to question her after she risked her life to save him. And people wondered why she only cared about herself.

"What about the bomb?"

"You said they would have a trick up their sleeve didn't you? They were never going to kill him."

"Don't ever play games with my son's life!" Naugus screamed as he prepared to backhand her. However, he froze for a moment before turning to clear his desk of its entire contents with an enraged swing instead. The light sparked as it hit the floor amidst the papers and the other dozen trinkets that followed. At least he had thought twice about hitting her. Fiona still intended to kill the last person who had.

"Not a copper in the city," Fiona said mimicking his accent from earlier. "Well what about one of these?" she asked holding out the dominion badge she had taken off one of the goons.

Naugus stared at the brass in her hand in disbelief before starting his manic laugh, "Too far this time Julian, too far."

"Who are these guys?" she asked

"Your gun, Fiona,"

She hesitated as she reached for her holster. It was not something she wanted to part with.

"Your gun," he repeated himself.

Rather than risk making him any angrier, she slid the weapon across his desk. It made the same satisfying sound she remembered from when he pushed it in her direction six years ago.

"For your services," he said through heavily gritted teeth while thrusting an envelope into her chest. "Now get out!"

"Boss?"

"Now!" he shouted so loud she thought the vein throbbing in his neck might burst.

Fiona had seen him mad plenty of times before, but this was a new level. Maybe it was because of his family, but something told her this went beyond that. On her ride down to the first floor, the vixen opened the plain white envelope revealing not only her standard pay, but something easily worth ten times more. It was an ID card that would let her live in the city. A false name of course, but it made little difference to her. She would be able to remain in the only place she had ever known as home. While the fox knew that Ixis wasn't generous without good reason, she still couldn't help but feel he must have cared for her. The fox sighed as she stepped out of the elevator and into the lobby.

"Rough day," Ingrid asked as she flipped a page in her book.

"Last day," the vixen replied sullenly.

"That's not what he told me. House keeping is expecting you first thing in the morning."

"Ohh," she replied before walking out the door and back out into her city.

Fiona giggled to herself for a moment trying to find the irony. All she had ever wanted in the first place was an honest job. Six years, a new outlook on life, and now the man who had molded her into a weapon was now going to confine her to cleaning duty. Why not, she thought, you might live a little longer Fi.


	4. Shattered Dreams

“Fiona,” the man said with some hesitation in his voice.

Ixis stood on the other side of his dream, or at least that is what he called it. On a make shift table in his office stood a tiny model of a grand casino spanning nearly an entire block of the Upper East Side. He eyed her carefully as she reached inside and plucked one of the pedestrians from the stairs leading up to its entrance. Carefully she replaced the person as if it was a real life in her hands. The smallest of things could set the man off, not the least of which was shattered dreams. He assured her that once it was done, nothing could stop him from running the city.

“Boss,” the fox replied, doing her best to keep the fear at bay as she locked eyes with him.

“I am afraid this is going to be your last assignment,” he replied as he returned to his perch behind his desk.

Naugus almost said the words as if they caused him some tiny amount of pain. To some extents the man had been like a father to her, not one that she wanted, but a father nonetheless. Although if she didn’t know better he barely knew she existed beyond her purpose. The vixen was nothing more than a tool that sat biding its time until it was needed.

At first it was the obscure, tracking people, ‘returning’ ‘lost’ merchandise, and even the occasional negotiation. Naugus had seen fit to dig himself into every nefarious trade there was, and that meant dealing with the Resistance. The underground group of Mobians had gotten their hands on enough weapons for a small army, which is exactly what her boss wanted. “Empires aren’t built on words,” he would say to her before sending her off to parley with some Mobian gunrunner.

However, the notorious velvet red fox had slowly become somewhat of an urban legend, one that instilled fear into the hearts of Naugus’ ‘business’ partners. He was not blind to this either. More than once the man had sent her to pay some poor soul a visit. The mere presence of the vulpine was often enough to cause her targets to cough up their payments plus a little interest.

Fiona was a ghost to most, including Ixis, coming and going as she pleased. Years ago she had foregone the denim jacket and kaki shorts she had shown up in and instead opted for something to help hide her amongst the shadows she now lived in. The fox stood in front of her boss, dressed head to toe in black. Those who did manage to catch glimpse of her often found something to look at. The leather pants she worse were so tight they often felt as if they might rip if she flexed a muscle too hard. While her jacket fit more loosely it was only because she left it unzipped, leaving her cotton black tank top visible. Between the deep cut V-neck shirt and her tail there was just enough red fur left noticeable to inform her enemies of who they were dealing with. The only thing that remained of her old life was the yellow ribbon that tied her hair back. Now in tatters, it served as a reminder of the younger fox she used to be.

“Last assignment?” she asked curiously, now concerned that she may have done something wrong.

Those who failed Naugus were not treated well and the rare few that dared to double cross him even worse. Vivid memories of seeing Ixis walk out of meat locker carrying a butcher’s knife covered in blood still haunted her. The screams she had heard coming out of the freezer only moments before were so chilling that she had yet to find a way to describe them. The man’s gaze had caught her as he left, and the hollowness behind his eyes only confirmed what she had always suspected; her boss had no soul. However, the fox knew that if she had done something wrong they wouldn’t be having such peaceful conversation. Fiona had served him as loyally as she could, at his beck and call any hour of the day. It wasn’t often that he turned to her, only when others had failed him. While she didn’t like getting table scraps, the fox often felt a sense of pride completing the missions others couldn’t. Ixis never thanked her, but instead gave her what she was due. The money rarely lasted as long as she would have liked, but it was work all the same.

 “It’s nothing personal, but it’s becoming far too risky to keep a lose canon such as yourself around.”

 _A loose canon,_ she thought, _is that how he thinks of me_. That assessment was crass to say the least. The vixen was often anything but. Cold and calculated at heart, everything she did had equal parts forethought and brutality in mind, something she thought her boss would appreciate. However, she didn’t do things for him, she did them for her, after all that is what he had taught her to do. The city and its inhabitants made her what she was, merciless and menacing. The fox continued to stare at him waiting for an explanation.

“Perhaps you know what next week is?” he asked.

“My birthday,” came her response, unsure if she should be flattered that he knew.

Ixis had never remembered it before, and she had a funny feeling that he wasn’t about to start unless it suited him.

“Right you are, eighteen already and by far one of my hardest working employees.”

“I don’t understand,” Fiona hesitated, “what does that have to do with anything?”

But before he could answer she remembered their new president. The fat man she had the fortune of meeting six years ago. Just as Naugus had predicted Mobian’s were all but outlawed from the Major cities unless they could get the permits necessary to stay there. Those papers were hard to come by and almost always required an employer willing to vouch for the Mobian in question. At eighteen you either had your papers or you were target practice for the local coppers, that is if they were feeling kind enough to ask for them in the first place.

“If I keep you around,” he continued, “your title on the registration form can’t read ‘hired gun’ now can it?”

She shook her head in agreement.

“However, I am not the type of man to let an asset walk out the door, not when it has other applications.”

She didn’t like where this was going. As part of his empire Ixis had a dingy underground bar a few blocks over that catered to the cheap drunks and affluent Mobians who had managed to keep their homes in the city. If she worked there it would only be as eye candy and entertainment, and the fox assured herself that she had more pride than that.

“I am skipping everyone else with this one,” he said as he pushed a file across the desk, “it is too personal. You are the only employee I have that has yet to disappoint me.”

Inside the folder was a ransom note made from cut up newspaper clippings. It read nothing more than, _If you want him back alive, pay up._

“No one extorts me!” Ixis said as he slammed a clenched fist into his desk.

“If you don’t mind me asking, who is ‘he’?”

Naugus gritted his teeth as he muttered, “my son.”

Fiona had always known the man had family, but she had never seen them. They were mentioned only in passing whispers by other staff. A subject known to many as off limits, and with good reason. To the best of her knowledge he and the misses were no longer on good terms and she had up and left taking his son with her. Now it looks as if someone was trying to take advantage of that. This was the first time she was almost sure her boss was being sentimental.

“That whiney little brat of mine got himself in a very tight spot, no thanks to his bitch of a mother,” he said fuming with rage.

After a few deep breaths he steadied himself as he continued, “this isn’t about them, it’s about me. When I am done with the clowns that took him, there won’t be a person in this city that doesn’t think at least three times before they fuck with me or anything or anyone that is mine.”

The fox flipped to the next page in the dossier. It was a map with an X over an abandoned building in the warehouse district next to the river.

“Is this where the exchange is supposed to happen?”

“Yes,” her boss replied coolly, “They want a rather large sum of money, but I don’t intend on giving them a single credit.”

“They?”

“Three lowlifes who don’t have much common sense. They will rue the day they I entered their lives.”

Fiona had little doubt of that.

“Anything else?”

“Expect them have a trick up their sleeve. They may be dumb, but they’re not stupid. All I care about is my son. Get him back.”

“You got it boss,” she replied as she turned to leave.

“Fiona,” Ixis said before the fox reached the door.

Turning back the man was dangling key from his wrinkly fingers, “You know how to drive right?”

When the occasion had called for it, she took the liberty of giving herself some lessons. Nothing about it seemed particularly difficult to understand except for why no one else on the road could seem to do it half as well as her.

“Sure,” the vixen replied as she caught the keys.

“Not a scratch,” the man said sternly. “There isn’t a copper in the city that will pull you over in that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s mine. Now stop wasting time and go find my son.”

Fiona nodded as she pocketed the keys trying to understand where the generosity was coming from. Ixis had given her exactly two things since she began working for him, money and a gun. It didn’t take the man long to get over giving her one either, even despite his initial misgivings. She could still recall the sound of him pushing the synthetic Glock across his desk towards her as if it were yesterday.

“And try not to kill anyone. It’s the only way I can continue to keep the coppers off your back. Papers or not they will put you in a hole and make you disappear if you’re found within a hundred feet of a corpse.”

“If they catch me,” she said with a smile.

The fox still had yet to cross that bridge and had no intention of doing so today. Sure, she had gotten her paws dirty, but nothing so far as killing anyone. Of course that meant the vixen had to discount the people she handed over to Naugus, people she never saw again. _Even if they are dead, you didn’t kill them Fi,_ she told herself.

The black sedan was parked out back in the garage behind the hotel. Its windows were totally blacked out with chrome trimmings around the side. After that, there wasn’t a distinctive mark on the car, not even a plate, which is perhaps what in and of itself made the vehicle so distinctive.

With a twist of her wrist, the car started promptly to life, purring as if it were happy to get the attention. Fiona ran her hand around the smooth leather steering wheel as she adjusted the mirrors. Luxury left her with an odd flutter in her stomach, but not one that she couldn’t learn to like. The fox smiled with inordinate amount of content as she slowly pulled away, leaving the slums behind in style befitting of royalty. Thankfully the lazy overcast Sunday kept the traffic to a minimum letting her coast indolently over the bridge as if she wasn’t in a hurry at all.

It was cooler down by the docks, it always was. Something about the moist air made the place taste like despair. A fog bank was just rolling in off the river when she pulled up, its grey billowy pillows skating across the water until they inevitably ran aground. The fox took a deep breath as she put the car in park. She could already feel the eyes preying at her, even inside the car.

That feeling rubbed the vixen the wrong way. She was the one used to doing the watching; being on the other side of the lens left her feeling exposed. Without a drop of fear in her complexion she reached for the handle and opened the door.  The gravel crumbled underneath her feet as she made her way across the clearing. Warehouses such as this one were shady from the outside in. A loose coat of grey paint over the rusted siding was all the attention it had received in the last ten years, a perfect place to stash a kid for a couple of days.

Fiona put a paw on the man door and pushed it open as it creaked in complaint. The football field sized structure was empty save for a chair in the middle and two goons standing behind it. She approached, veins still flowing with ice.

“You got our money?” one of them called out.

The vixen didn’t respond, instead she continued to walk, the solid sound of concrete now under her boots. Something didn’t smell right, she could see two, but knew there were three.

“You hear me? You got our money?”

The lighting was shitty at best. The florescent bulbs were flickering like a bug zapper in a swamp. Condensation could do that in a place like this. The fox was barely able to make out their faces, which meant they certainly couldn’t see hers.  While each had a weapon at their side, neither made any attempt to spook her.

“Stop!” one of them yelled in a deep authoritative voice.

The vixen took her last step, finally satisfied with distance between her and the men with guns. Her objective lay between the three of them shivering in fear. The boy’s torso was lashed to the back of a chair, his hands taped to his sides, and to top everything off a black shroud covered his heads to dull his senses and keep him trapped in the darkness of fear.

“The money,” the thug on the left said curtly, “please.”

“Why are there only two of you?” Fiona asked bluntly.

Upon hearing the female voice the pair exchanged looks as they took a step closer to her. Amidst the nervous footsteps the vixen’s ear twitched as she found the breath of a third man. She smiled, letting a canine fall from her mouth. No longer did they have the advantage.

Whether it was her glowing eyes or sharp teeth, the men froze when they realized it was not a human approaching them.

“Shit,” one of them muttered to the other, “that’s the Red Shadow man.”

Fiona enjoyed that nickname. Every once in a while she would catch whispers of it behind her back. The red furred fox that materialized from darkness was well known for a lot of things, and weakness was not one of them.

Before either of them could decide what to do with this new information Fiona pulled her gun and fired a shot into the air. A man screaming in pain quickly followed as he dropped his sawed off Remington from the shadowy rafters above. Without batting an eye she caught the clunky weapon in her off hand and proceeded to point it in her remaining enemies’ directions.

As she stared them down, their less than acrobatic friend fell from his hiding spot, but not gracefully. When she finally took a peek at the man who was screaming bloody murder it was to find that the leg she hadn’t shot was bent quite a few degrees in the wrong direction.

“Do you know who you’re dealing with?” the fox asked as she took a step closer to securing the boy.

No one answered.

“Let him go and you get to walk away.”

Neither of them looked happy about their predicament.

Doing her best to ignore the groaning man, Fiona advanced towards her target, keeping the two idiots that stood behind him in her sights The one on the right worked up the balls to shoulder his rifle. With two quick shots from her Glock the man fell over squirming in pain, clutching a bleeding shoulder.

“Your move cowboy,” the vixen said with her wry little smile as she turned to the last of her enemies.

The thug nodded in agreement as he dropped his pistol to the ground. Fiona knew as soon as she saw him reach inside his pocket she should have shot him, but now it was too late.

“You know what this is?” he asked as he held out a small device.

Now the fox had to nod. She had seen remote detonators enough times to know the drill.

“Not another step or there won’t be much left of that kid.”

The trick to dealing with pricks like this was convincing them they were in fact the ones that had everything to lose.

“You go ahead and do that,” Fiona replied as she walked past the boy, guns still trained on the maniac in question.

“I’ll do it,” he proclaimed, “I swear.”

“I believe you,” she replied even though she didn’t. “Naugus only told me to come down here and make it plain that you were not getting any of his money. He didn’t seem too concerned about the kid one way or the other.”

She was now fifteen feet away and the beads of sweat forming on the thug’s face began to show rather clearly.

“So I might urge you to take a look around at your friends, all of whom are still breathing for now. What does an intelligent man such as yourself think would happen next if you pressed that button?” the fox asked.

Fiona had learned long ago to play to people’s egos. Always make them feel smart, and let them think they have some control even if they don’t. Misdirection could work in so many ways. The man gulped as the fox rested the barrel of her new sawed off on his knee.

“What do you say I let you walk away?” she asked in a semi seductive voice. “All you have to do is drop that,” the vixen continued as she motioned to the detonator.

He dropped it just like she thought he would. With a smile she flipped the shotgun around as if to offer it to him. When he reached for it she pulled back and swing it like a club. The low life crumpled to the ground unconscious leaving her alone with his two noisy partners that were still rolling around on the ground in pain.

After tossing the Remington and grabbing the detonator Fiona reached into his jacket pocket somewhat curious about the type of man that would kidnap a little kid, let alone strap him to a bomb. To her surprise her paws did not come up empty. A small badge encased in leather gleamed in the dull light. An iron red fist was affixed against a city’s skyline. She had seen one of these before.

“Dominion?” she whispered to herself before pocketing the badge.

The boy was shaking uncontrollably and for that she couldn’t blame him.

“Hold on kid,” she said as she felt around for the knots that held him to the chair.

As her paws worked at the rope a screeching noise erupted from the far end of the warehouse as the large freight door slowly opened.

“Damn it,” the fox swore as she grabbed the back of the seat and dragged it towards the door she had entered through.

Even if he was only twelve the human child weighed every bit as much as she did, which severely hampered her escape. Looking over her back as the chair legs grinded against the pavement floor she hoped for a glimpse of what she presumed were more enemies. Slowly the sliver of light grew as the large doors at the other end opened further, revealing some very troubling silhouettes. Reaching for the handle, the fox wasn’t surprised to find it locked. Fiona jiggled it before putting two rounds into the bolt and throwing her weight against the solid metal door. Nothing budged and she was trapped, “like a rat,” she muttered to herself.

The man in the middle of the entourage was clapping slowly as if to mock her efforts.

“Impressive,” he called out, “but futile. Besides, you’re forgetting something.”

The mystery man forced a woman to the ground in front of him, putting a pistol to the back of her head. The fox had been confident in her ability to retrieve the boy safely, but she was quickly loosing that feeling. Who ever this guy was he had a lot more company than she could deal with. Six men in full armor stood at his side and if that wasn’t enough there were two ten-foot tall robots accompanying them.

“I am sorry,” the woman screamed. “Patrick, tell your father I am sorry.”

“Mom,” the child screamed through the black shroud.

Before Fiona could say a word, the man pulled the trigger on his gun. The shot echoed about the silent warehouse and even for a person who couldn’t see, there was little question as to what just happened. This was a setup and both she and Naugus had walked right into it.

“Mom,” the kid screamed again, this time through an uncontrollable sob.

Fiona froze for second as she relived a moment from her past; this was a pain the vixen understood. To be there right when some pathetic excuse for a criminal took the life of someone you loved was a terrible feeling. Being helpless and blind only made it worse.

 “Give him back,” the man commanded with a tone that implied there were zero alternatives.

The fox begged to differ, however. With a stern kick she shattered the chair and freed the boy who was now near lifeless with sorrow. In just second her free hand pried the c4 that was stuck to the bottom of the stool and crammed it into the door’s handle. Ducking to the side, she shielded the kid, reached in her pocket, and squeezed the detonator.

The door flew from its hinges in a fiery explosion that shook the building. Once they realized the fox was about to make an escape they opened fire. Bullets filled the air, ripping holes in the cheap siding.

“Stop you idiots!” she heard one of them yell, “The boy needs to be alive.”

The kid had gone limp, making it nearly impossible to get him outside. Just as she did, one of the mechs put a hole in the wall next to her big enough for a truck to drive through. What ever the things were they were new and they hit hard.

Fiona was done babying the youngster and promptly full on threw him into the passenger seat of the car. Jumping right over him, she didn’t even bother to shut the door. The engine roared to life as she twisted the key with her foot already on the gas pedal. The rear tires kicked up dirt and gravel alike as they spun sending the car forward and snapping the side door shut.

The robots that had tagged along with her new friends were faster than she could have imagined. Slow to start, they quickly worked themselves up into sprint, crashing through the hole they had already created.

Circling back around onto the pavement Fiona headed for the main road, but not before one of the bots took another shot. Inside it had been loud enough, but outside the canon echoed for miles. The round nearly clipped the mirror on Ixis’ car as it streaked by, colliding with a stationary forklift in front of her. The mangled vehicle flipped into her path forcing her to swerve onto a side street.

Glancing in her mirror for a second was all it took for her enemies to get the jump on her. One of the bots had managed to make its way around the buildings and walk out into the end of the road, blocking her way. The fox slammed on the breaks, bringing the car to a tire screeching halt. Fiona rammed the shifter into reverse and gunned it again, but just as she looked over her shoulder the bot that had been chasing her rounded the corner.

“Shit,” she swore out loud as she spun the wheel in desperation.

The vehicle careened right through a paper-thin garage door and into another warehouse. The vixen didn’t remove her foot from the gas pedal as she continued to smash through empty crate and support beams alike with the car’s rear bumper.

Two more loud cracks erupted while all the windows in the building exploded simultaneously as two auto cannon rounds shredded what was left of the warehouse, sending debris in all directions. They were trying to bring the building down on top of her.

“I can’t see anything,” the kid screamed.

“Trust me when I say you don’t want to,” the fox barked back at him over the redlined V8.

When the car finally plowed through the wall on the other side of the warehouse, Fiona couldn’t have been happier to put a dent in Naugus’ car.  Reaching up to the steering column she shifted back into drive and pointed the car towards the road. Just as she got it up to speed the bots struck again. This time, one of their rounds found an old crane stationed by the docks. Its supports popped under the explosive tension, sending everything above crashing down right in front of her and the only clean path out.

“You have got to be kidding me,” the vixen shrieked at the top of her lungs as she swerved the car down another alley.

The only thing she was thankful for at this point was the fact that they wanted the kid alive. If not for that she would have had a front row seat to her first barbeque. Their only option was to try and trap the fox, but unfortunately for her they seemed to be succeeding.

One of the bots was closing fast, and the second it grabbed her car everything was over. As the sedan raced down the tiny street she was forced to weave amongst the big equipment the dock crews had left out over the weekend. The fox instinctively went for her Glock as she ripped the handbrake, forcing a one eighty. With her paw out the window, the vixen fired not at the ten foot tall mech, but at the run down truck all too conveniently filled with acetylene tanks she had just driven by. One shot, two shot, three shot, but still nothing.

“Damn it!” Fiona screamed as she fired a fourth.

The explosion was beyond spectacular, sending a fireball a hundred feet in the air. A shockwave rippled through the air shredding small objects adding to the shrapnel that pelted the bulletproof windshield. The heat nearly singed the fur on her arm as she pulled it back inside. Above all, the bot, or what was left of it, would no longer be a problem, leaving only its brother to torment her and the kid.

Now all she needed was a way out of this god-forsaken maze. Warehouse after warehouse streaked by as she looked for another street that would let her return to the rat infested city she called home.

“There,” she said out loud as if it mattered. The boy sitting next to her still couldn’t see a damn thing.

Turning hard onto another main road she could make out a chain link gate with a guardhouse up ahead. It wasn’t ideal, but it would put up a lot less fight than what was chasing her in the rear view mirror. The remaining bot fired again, but the shot did nothing more than destroy the tiny shack next to the gate and remove part of the fence for her. The weight of her vehicle traveling in excess of a hundred miles per hour easily sailed through the aluminum wire gate and continued on it’s way as if nothing were there to begin with.

All she had to do now was make it to the tunnel and she was home free. There was no chance in hell a bot like that would be able to maneuver in such a small space. With just two more turns the Estarax Tunnel willingly swallowed them up along with all the other vehicles on the road.

The noise of her car’s engine running at full tilt hummed provocatively off the tiled ceiling as she careened past cars at such a speed they appeared only to be blurs. The mech on the other hand had already managed to step on a car, kicking it to the side only to run into another. Fiona breathed a large sigh of relief when she saw it disappear in the city’s traffic.

“Are – are we there yet?” the brat had the nerve to ask after a few moments of silence.

The vixen couldn’t think of anything polite to say, so instead hit the accelerator harder and let the car do the talking for her.  

When she arrived back in the garage and turned the key, the engine promptly fell asleep with a hiss as if it had been pleading for a reprieve. Fiona finally reached over and removed the black satin shroud from Naugus’ son’s head. Tears were still rolling down rosy red cheeks and she almost couldn’t help but feel bad for him.

“C’mon,” she said as she tore the tape away from his hands, “let’s go see your dad.”

“No,” came his response through a sniffle.

The vixen didn’t feel like arguing, but she was willing to spare a few more moments for him to justify his case.

“No?” she replied as mother might to a two year old.

“No,” he repeated with some hesitation, “He is a bad man, and a worse dad. He hasn’t been there once for me.”

“He was there today,” Fiona reminded him.

“Only because it would hurt his pride. He didn’t even try to save my mom…” the boy added before his words turned into sobs again.

The fox scooted him out of the car and marched him up to the building. For being only twelve he had oddly twisted view on the world, even if it was completely right. Luckily for her, the kid didn’t fight. Maybe he knew there was no arguing with his father, or perhaps he had been paying attention enough to know that there would also be no arguing with her.

What Fiona would give for a reunion with her parents was indeterminable, but that didn’t stop her from picturing it every day, and that went nothing like presenting Naugus with his son.

When Fiona walked into his office she tossed him the keys to his car back, “you might need to get it detailed.”

The man’s expression indicated he did not appreciate the humor in the matter.

“I did manage to find this though,” Fiona said as she pulled the kid into the room.

“Good then I see everything went according to plan,” Ixis replied.

The fox didn’t quite know how to tell him that wasn’t the case and perhaps the look on her muzzle said as much. However, the kid seemed rather content to tell him in detail for her.

“According to plan!” he yelled. “What kind of plans do you make up here? Ones that involve getting mom killed? Ones that involve having some stupid fox play chicken with guy holding the detonator to the bomb I am sitting on? Ones that involve me getting shot at?”

Naugus twirled the keys in his hand as he listened to his son’s tirade, clearly unsure of how much of the story to believe. Turning back to Fiona he only said one word, “Explain.”

“Explain what?” she nearly spat. “You’re welcome by the way,” the fox said curtly to the boy now sitting on his father’s couch.

“Start with why he says my wife is dead.”

“Because she is. It was a setup. Whoever it was didn’t seem to care too much about her. They walked her in and executed her.”

“Are you going to sit there and believe her dad?” the little brat had the nerve to suggest.

Ixis raised his hand to silence the boy with a look so stern it could have stopped a charging bull cold in its tracks. Fiona could hardly believe the words coming out of his mouth. The kid had the audacity to question her after she risked her life to save him. And people wondered why she only cared about herself.

“What about the bomb?”

“You said they would have a trick up their sleeve didn’t you? They were never going to kill him.”

“Don’t ever play games with my son’s life!” Naugus screamed as he prepared to backhand her. However, he froze for a moment before turning to clear his desk of its entire contents with an enraged swing instead. The light sparked as it hit the floor amidst the papers and the other dozen trinkets that followed. At least he had thought twice about hitting her.  Fiona still intended to kill the last person who had.

“Not a copper in the city,” Fiona said mimicking his accent from earlier. “Well what about one of these?” she asked holding out the dominion badge she had taken off one of the goons.

Naugus stared at the brass in her hand in disbelief before starting his manic laugh, “Too far this time Julian, too far.”

“Who are these guys?” she asked

“Your gun, Fiona,”

She hesitated as she reached for her holster. It was not something she wanted to part with.

“Your gun,” he repeated himself.

Rather than risk making him any angrier, she slid the weapon across his desk. It made the same satisfying sound she remembered from when he pushed it in her direction six years ago.

“For your services,” he said through heavily gritted teeth while thrusting an envelope into her chest. “Now get out!”

“Boss?”

“Now!” he shouted so loud she thought the vein throbbing in his neck might burst.  

Fiona had seen him mad plenty of times before, but this was a new level. Maybe it was because of his family, but something told her this went beyond that. On her ride down to the first floor, the vixen opened the plain white envelope revealing not only her standard pay, but something easily worth ten times more. It was an ID card that would let her live in the city. A false name of course, but it made little difference to her. She would be able to remain in the only place she had ever known as home. While the fox knew that Ixis wasn’t generous without good reason, she still couldn’t help but feel he must have cared for her. The fox sighed as she stepped out of the elevator and into the lobby.

“Rough day,” Ingrid asked as she flipped a page in her book.

“Last day,” the vixen replied sullenly.

“That’s not what he told me. House keeping is expecting you first thing in the morning.”

“Ohh,” she replied before walking out the door and back out into her city.

Fiona giggled to herself for a moment trying to find the irony. All she had ever wanted in the first place was an honest job. Six years, a new outlook on life, and now the man who had molded her into a weapon was now going to confine her to cleaning duty. _Why not,_ she thought, _you might live a little longer Fi._


	5. Take Me With You

At First Sight

Her parents had moved to the city with the impression that there would be work. The way they explained it made sense too, the more people there are, the more work that needs to be done. Few Mobians had been brave enough to mingle amongst the humans for fear of the growing negative view towards their kind. Instead the bulk of King Acorn’s subjects kept to the countryside where they farmed and tended to the land that they saw as their own. _Bet you wished you had never moved here ma,_ Fiona thought to herself as she polished the bottom of a mug. 

They were not wrong though; there was always a job to be had. Although Fiona often questioned the cost, not just in terms of her own dignity, but also safety. Her parents had paid with their lives in search of a better life for her. They were cut down right in front of her and their killer given nothing more than a slap on the wrist. The fox wanted to leave this city, its stench was more than her nose could take, but it was still her home. Her parents were strangers when they came here, but now she was a stranger to everywhere else. 

The feeling of loneliness often crept up on her. Not even Ixis bothered to talk with her anymore. He had swept her under the carpet for use on a rainy day while he waged secret wars that she could take no part in. Instead, the red fox worked in his hotel until he decided to tear it down. In its place, something that resembled the miniature Casino that he so proudly showcased in his office was beginning to emerge. 

Now, unfortunately, her only means of legitimate employment was the Barn Yard. A cheekily named bar that catered to the affluent Mobians who had managed to keep their homes or cheap humans with unusual tastes. Fiona sighed to herself, as she reminisced about the freedom she used to have. 

“Quit day dreaming Fi,” Blaze said from the other end of the bar, “those drinks won’t deliver themselves.”

The vixen grumbled as she grabbed the tray and stepped out onto the floor. Eyes followed her as she walked through a sea of drunks, Mobians and Humans alike. Serving was only one shade of grey better than having to dance on stage. 

“No touching!” she growled at a mangy wolf that had run his hand through her tail.

Mobians, she understood, but she had yet to figure out what the humans wanted in a place like this. 

“Here you go boys,” she said to the construction workers, all of whom were still in their work clothes. 

“Well hello there foxy woxy?” One of them asked with a big grin on his face.

Fiona smiled a fake smile at the man as she held back a look of disgust. “Enjoy,” she added before turning to leave the men to their drinks. A hand found her shoulder, digging in and halting her on the spot. 

“Where you go’n red?”

The vixen spun on her heels baring her fangs as she let out low growl. The hand loosened as the men visibly retreated. It wasn’t the first time and she knew it wouldn’t be the last. Part of her wanted to feel flattered, but drunks were all the same. Tail was tail to them, and she made sure to give it a nice wag as she left the table reminding them all what they couldn’t have.  Combined with her outfit, it didn’t take much to get half of the establishment’s customer’s looking in her direction. Her tight fitting jean shorts and low cut V-neck t-shirt left little to the imagination. 

“Pigs,” she muttered under her breath as she made her way back to safety. 

It was a small wonder no one recognized her for who she was. Even though no one had seen the red shadow in over two years, Fiona was confident not a soul in the room would look in her direction if they knew she was the same fox. Good looks are not, she was known for colder things. 

“I still don’t understand why you won’t dance?” the purple cat asked having watched her from across the room. “You might actually make enough money to live in this god forsaken place.”

“Ha,” Fiona laughed in response, “if you call some ten by ten room living.”

“You still didn’t answer the question,” Blaze pressed. 

“Answer is the same as last time. Self respect.”

“They all say that. You have been working here all of two weeks, give it four and we will see how much respect you have then.”

The fox had already felt herself losing what little she had left for herself. Maybe she wasn’t selling her looks, but she had a feeling her parents had better plans for her than waitressing in some gentlemen’s club. It was getting harder and harder to find honest paid work and Fiona knew she was scraping at the bottom of the barrel, but there was no reason to rot it all the way through. She could always go back to the shady alley ways where she had spent much of her life. A room to call her own was something the fox had lived without since her parents had died, she wasn’t missing anything.

“Trust me,” Mina chimed in, “this place will break you.”

“Perhaps that’s because you two were too weak,” the fox said as she started back at the mongoose that had seemed to have gotten yet another piercing since the last time she had seen her. 

“Just you wait and see, before long you will be…”

Fiona put her hand in the air to cut Mina off and finish her sentence. “Be inviting my ‘favorite’ customers back to my place just for some extra cash?” she asked suggestively, raising an eyebrow in accusation. “No thanks.”

The mongoose was scowling at her and even though she couldn’t see her, the vixen could feel the burning gaze of the cat behind her. Making new friends in a place like this was not something she had any desire in doing. This job was a means to an end, not a life style. 

A few more people burst into the bar causing the bell attached to the door to jingle loudly and the girls to shift their gaze away from one another. Mina was the first to gasp. 

“Holly shit,” Blaze said in amazement. “What are they doing here?”

“Who?” Fiona asked as she eyed an oddly professionally dressed coyote and young but rough looking fox enter the room.

“What do you mean who?” Mina asked. “Do you have any idea who they are?”

“No, should I?” the vixen asked unimpressed with the new comers. 

“The fox, surely you have heard of him,” Blaze said as she nodded in his direction.

There didn’t seem to be anything special about him apart from the two tech 9s that were holstered on his hips. Then Fiona rubbed her eyes as if unsure to believe them. _He has two tails,_ she thought to herself as she put the pieces together. _A Freedom Fighter._ She had run into members of the Resistance before, but not this one. Wanted posters with his face were plastered all over the post office.

“That right there, Fiona, is Miles Prower. Take a good look, because it’s not often you will see him and live to talk about it.”

“What do you mean?” the vixen asked.

“He isn’t at the top of Julian’s most wanted list for nothing honey. That fox has killed nearly as many Dominion Agents as Sonic.”

That name she knew. But then again everyone did. 

“What are they doing here?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, but I am willing to bet they are not here for the entertainment.”

The room had quieted substantially once most of the customers had noticed the pair of Freedom Fighters in the room. The humans especially seemed to fade into the background, shielding their faces if gazes wandered in their direction.

“Well then there is one way to find out,” Fiona said as she walked towards the two tailed fox. 

“What are you doing Fi?” Blaze whispered to her with a petty amount of concern layered in. 

The vixen responded with a sinister grin, which she continued to wear even as she approached the table. It wasn’t every day Fiona had the fortune of meeting another fox, especially one with two tails. More than that, she was captivated by his reputation. Not a single person in the room wasn’t afraid of the kit. She had grown up on the worst Capital City’s streets. Tough meant something different to her than most and she didn’t see any reason to fear this Miles Prower. 

“What’l it be boys?” she asked in a serious tone as if she had no idea who they were.

The fox eyed her from floor to the tips of her ears, sizing her up, unsure of what to make of her. 

“We’s are not requiring anyzing at zis time, mam,” the Coyote responded with a thick French accent. 

“Why don’t you order a drink?” she suggested. “Everyone here is going to think you are up to something if you don’t.”

“Who says we aren’t?” the kit said with a smile on his face.

She stared back at the fox blankly, unimpressed. 

“Fine,” he said in response as he got up on to his chair. “Anyone one here want a drink?” he yelled.

A few cheers went up throughout the room. 

“Drinks for everyone on me, hell, make it two,” Miles said out loud as he slapped a fat wad of cash onto the table. 

The room exploded into excitement at the prospect of free drinks, cheering the fox out loud, “to Miles Prower,” a badger barked hoisting a glass high into the air. Surprisingly even the humans joined in, somehow more at ease with a notorious public enemy in the room now that he was buying them drinks.

With a furrowed brow the vixen tried to estimate the value of the money in front of her, but she could barely recall a time in recent memory when she had seen that much in one place. 

“This is enough to put everyone in this room under the table for two weeks.”

“Then keep the change,” he insisted.

 _Who says you need to dance to make good tip,_ Fiona though to herself as she held back a smirk _._

Colleting the cash, Fiona smiled back at the kit with big bright eyes, “I’ll be right back sweetie.”

The other girls did not look amused at her success, but they kept their mouths shut as she joined them in pouring the beer. The animals were quick to lap it up, as if their life depended on it.

“This was the last thing we needed,” Blaze sighed, “They are bad enough when they get through drinking what they can afford.”

That turned out to be true. Everyone was twice as unruly by the time she got around to delivering the second round. The wolf who had grabbed her Tail before felt doubly compelled to try for something a little more. 

“Hey!” she screamed at him, “What did I tell you!?”

“Not sure I can remember,” he replied sarcastically through stuttered speech.

“Try it again and I will remind you,” Fiona said through gritted teeth as she turned away. 

The slimy feeling of his hand on the back of her leg returned as soon as she looked away. Without even thinking she whisked his paw away, bending it well past the breaking point. The wolf howled when his wrist made a snapping sound that seemed to cut through the chatter in the room. By now everyone was watching as the fox disabled a Mobian nearly twice her size while carrying a platter of drinks in her off hand. He moved to stop her with his other arm, but the vixen kicked the chair out from underneath him as she grabbed his face and smashed it into the bar in front of him. His body slumped to the floor in an unconscious state. 

“No touching,” Fiona said coolly to the wolf lying on the floor.

His friends however, did not appear to be amused, all of whom stood up and surrounded her. Fiona wasn’t one to back down from a fight, but she knew this one was going to hurt. Even if they were drunk, they were a couple of large Mobians, the bear the most concerning of the bunch. 

A whistled pierced the air, forcing everyone to turn towards the source. Miles sat in his chair, arms crossed, looking at the other fox slightly amused. 

“I hope none of you were thinking of hitting a lady,” the kit said with a broad smile on his face that only seemed to beg them to test him.

“Hardly a lady if you ask me,” the bear growled as he backed away from Fiona. 

She curtsied for them just to prove the opposite; although she was quite confident no one bought her performance. Fiona returned to the bar to grab the last of the lager before she headed back to the two tailed fox’s table. 

“I appreciate the sentiment,” she began as she set the drinks on the Freedom Fighter’s table, “but I can handle myself just fine.”

“I can see that,” Miles replied, “but I thought I would save you the trouble. I think you made your point quite clear,” the two tailed fox continued as he motioned to the wolf no one had bothered to move. 

“That one never could figure it out,” she said under her breath.

“Do I have any room left of my tab?” 

Fiona looked back at the fox in surprise, “I think you still got a couple thousand left on it. Would you like something a little better to drink?” she asked nodding towards the Coyote who had yet to touch either of his beers?”

“No zy I am not ze types of person to be touching zis stuff.”

“Then what are you interested in?”

“Nothing that’s on the menu,” Tail said with a plain look on his face.

 _He’s cute,_ Fiona thought to herself. He may have been seventeen to her twenty, but his attitude and stature made up for what most grown men lacked. 

“Sorry honey, I don’t think you can afford it.”

“I didn’t even tell you what I want.”

“You think you’re the first smooth talker to come in here?”

The fox pulled out another stack of a hundred dollar bills, “What is your definition of ‘cannot afford’?”

“Do you have a duffle bag full of those?” the vixen asked motioning to the money in his hand.

The kit set the money down and stared back at her with a grin, “your boss has got something for me in the back, perhaps you could go get it?”

The fox blushed; she hadn’t realized Miles was talking discreetly about something entirely different, “I… I am sorry I thought that you were talking about… I will go get that for you.”

“Wait,” he called out for her, “He isn’t going to hand it over without this,” the kit said as he pushed the stack of bills across the table. 

“Right,” she replied as she picked up an even larger helping of money. 

 _Whatever he does pays well,_ the vixen couldn’t help but think as she thumbed through each sheet of the green paper, smelling that distinctive odder that made her just a little bit happier. 

“Boss,” she said knocking on the office door in the back room.

“What have I told you about bothering me this time of day!?” a scream came back.

“There is a Miles Prower here to collect something,”

“What, already?” the response came over shuffling and scrambling. “Does he have the money?”

The door swung open rapidly and Fiona held out the cash in response. 

“Here, give him this.”

The pasty white English man with aspirations larger than most thrust a small package into her hands as he ripped the money out of hers. Without so much as a thank you he slammed the door in her face, leaving her almost confused about their exchange. 

Fiona shook the box gently as she walked back into the main room. It wasn’t big whatever it was. _What could be worth so much that would fit in here?_

“Here you go Mr. Miles Prower, sir,” the vixen said as she presented him with the box.

“Tails,” he responded almost harshly. 

“What?”

“My friends call me Tails.”

Fiona smiled back at him, “Anything else Miles?”

“Depends,”

“On what?” she asked hiding all the amusement in her voice.

“What do you recommend?”

“Our beer borders on piss, the vodka is one part water and one part rubbing alcohol, and the only thing left after that is the entertainment. That is if you are in to that type of thing.”

The fox seemed to mull it over in his head.

“Tails, wez gots what you needed. I thinkz it best for us to be getting out of here, no?”

“Can it Twan,” the kit snapped at his partner. “Do you dance?” Miles asked inquisitively.

The grin on her face grew. She should have known this fox was toying with her, “I already told you sweetie, you can’t afford it.”

“Not even with my credit?”

 _He is trying so hard,_ Fiona thought as her cheeks turned a little red. However, she knew it was working. His charm, or rather lack thereof, was welcoming. His candor and playfulness was convivial compared to the slobs that roamed most of Capital City’s underbelly.

“Sorry sweetie, I don’t dance. Call it a personal rule of mine.”

“Perhaps you miss understood me.”

“How is that?”

“I don’t want you to dance for me. I want you dance with me.”

The request caught her off guard. Too often people wanted things from her, but this was different. Realizing that her mouth was still agape she quickly shut it and walked away before she embarrassed herself anymore. _Fiona, why are you making such a fool of yourself in front of him?_

“What’s with that look?” Mina asked as she continued washing the glass wear. 

“He asked me to dance,” Fiona replied softly.

“And you said no,” Blaze said confidently, “Miss I am too good for everyone else.”

“And after such a big tip,” Mina added on. 

“If you think a fox like that is going to walk in here every day Fi, you got another thing coming.”

_What are you doing Fiona?  You can’t just let a cute fox like that walk out of here. Maybe he could take you with him. There has to be more to the world than this city._

“You’re right,” the vixen responded. 

“What do you mean I am right?” Blaze asked confused.

“Where is the music?”

“In the binder next to the disc player. Why?” Mina answered visibly surprised by the fox’s sudden change in heart.

 _What good is looking through this when you don’t know a single damn song?_ The vixen asked herself as she flipped through the list. Closing her eyes, she blindly pointed to a track. “Fade Into Darkness,” the fox sighed, _Something tells me this isn’t how I want to start things_. But rather than pick something else she stomached her blind choice and slid the disc into the machine.

“Fi, what are you doing, stage is that way,” Mina reminded her as she walked out into the main room of the bar. 

When the first note hit, the lights dimmed and the entire room looked in her direction. Slowly she approached the bewildered kit as she moved her hips side to side. _They want a show and he wants a girl, why not make everyone happy?_

Offering him her hand he was hesitant to grasp it. She pulled him gently to his feet and gave him a moment to steady himself. Somehow the fox seem unprepared. As she led him into a clearing Fiona wrapped her silky tail around the kit, pulling him in close. It took a while for him to respond, but the kit picked up his step soon enough. _Perhaps he was expecting something with a slower beat?_ She thought with a small amount of concern.

“Looking up there is always sky, rest your head I will take you high,” the song began.

If he was he didn’t let it show. In no time at all he had literally swept the vixen off her feet, twirling her around with strength she never anticipated. When her feet did find the ground again she pressed her forehead to his staring into his deep blue eyes, which glowed an odd shade of orange in the dim light. The reprieve was only momentary and she once again found herself being spun faster than she could keep up with. The room became a blur and the song hypnotic. Fiona had never been scared of falling in love until her breath caught up with her. Each memory seemed to seep into the next as she continued to fall for the kit.

“Hold my hand, just in case, and we won’t face into darkness,” echoed inside of her head.

Panting in excitement she could barely remember the kit leading her out of the bar. His gentle touch seemed magnetic and it seemed as if she had left her resistance to him inside. The vixen almost laughed out loud when she realized what was happening. She had sworn to herself that she would never trust someone else, but from the first time she saw the Miles, she knew there was something different about him. He was everything she wanted, but she didn’t know how to tell him that.

When she finally caught her breath, it was at the top of a fire escape on a building two blocks away. The fox had assured her the view of the stars at the top of the building would be better, but that is hardly what she cared about.

 “Take me with you,” she blurted out all at once as she followed him onto the roof top.

The look on the fox’s face did not bode well for the answer he was about to give, “I wish that I could.”

“I am as good a fighter as any, you won’t need to worry about me.”

The kit chuckled at her enthusiasm, “There is more to it than that.”

If only he knew who she really was. The fox that she used to be, perhaps then he wouldn’t be treating her like the cute vixen he saw. 

“Oh yeah? Like what?” Fiona asked.

“We don’t just trust anyone,” Miles said trying not offend her. “You grew up here and there probably isn’t a Mobian that I know who would vouch for a fox who grew up in Capital City. The Acorns are cautious people.”

“Are you saying you wouldn’t vouch for me?” Fiona said putting on a frown.

The kit laughed again, “I barely know the first thing about you. Sure you can fight, but can you shoot? How are you in a tight spot? Can you rob a bank? Ever killed someone? How about a Dominion Agent?”

She stared at him blankly. He was right he didn’t know the first thing about her. Pulling him in close she gave him a long kiss to distract him as she freed one of his Tech 9s. When she pulled away, the vixen took aim at a flowerpot on the building across the street and pulled the trigger. It exploded into a thousand pieces with a thunderous crack that echoed about the surrounding apartment complexes. No one even bothered to come to their windows, the sound of gun fire was something that everyone in the Upper East Side was familiar with.

It was his turn to look surprised, “Well that answers that question then.”

“Do I really need to answer the others?”

The kit put a paw on the side of muzzle as he moved closer to kiss her again. 

 _Such a naive fox,_ she thought as they continued their embrace. While he had raddled off his list of accomplishments that were no doubt meant to impress her, it was obvious that kissing a girl was not included. _You can kill all the Dominion agents you like Miles, but it won’t make up for something you have never done._

Although she knew she wasn’t one to judge. The nights she had spent with male companions were few and far between and never seemed to venture much further than a brief kiss. _He is getting better though,_ she thought as she felt the softness of his lips press against hers again. 

Before long she pushed him away, “I don’t want you to get any funny ideas now.”

“Did my money finally run out?”

The vixen shoved him lightheartedly. The truth was she felt herself be drawn to him, and it scared her. Fiona knew better than to get attached to anyone, but she felt as if it may have been too late for that. She had spent her whole life relying on herself. Letting someone else seemed dangerous, but her heart was clear about what it wanted. 

“Would you like to see what I got,” the kit asked as playfully tossed the small package she had given him earlier. 

With a flick of his combat knife, the tape that sealed the box fell away and removed what looked like a pair of glasses. 

“Not very fashionable if you ask me,” the vixen remarked as he put them on.

The kit chuckled as his fingers found a button on goggle wire frames. The glass came to life with glowing green lines that where hardly legible to her. 

“Here,” he insisted, “try ‘em out for yourself.”

Fiona let her two tailed companion place the device on her face. At first there was nothing as her eyes darter around the world expecting to see something.

“It’s not working.”

“Try focusing on something.”

She couldn’t help but looking at him. Almost instantly his profile came up and details flooded the screen. The information was endless and she couldn’t consume it fast enough. The girls in the bar hadn’t been lying, the fox was no one to mess with and was clearly in the upper echelon of the Resistance.  He smiled at her when she realized what she was doing.

“See something you like?”

Fiona smiled and turned her attention towards the streets. Immediately street names appeared at the cross sections and the time left on the traffic lights. A glance at the apartment building across the street revealed with width of the windows and the unit that each one belonged to. The HUD even showed her the current flowing through the power lines. 

“Pretty cool huh?” the kit asked rhetorically as she removed them from her face.

The vixen had always been used to her heightened senses, but this piece of tech took her awareness of her surroundings to an entirely new level. 

“Not bad,” she replied trying to act unimpressed. “Kind of ruins the fun though.”

The kit took the glasses back before returning them to the box. 

“Some things are better left a mystery,” Fiona added now concerned the kit may discover her secret.  

Before long the two were on their backs lying next to one another as they stared playfully at the stars, passing the time in each other’s company. She had never bothered to look up before and it felt odd that this was the first time the vixen was noticing the multitude of worlds that existed above her head. Ordinarily it would have made her life feel meaningless, but somehow lying next to the Miles, made it seem like the possibilities were endless. 

“Miles?” she asked breaking the long silence. 

“I told you, call me Tails.”

“Miles,” she repeated knowing that it bothered him. “Take me with you.”

 


	6. Best Served Cold

In just the time it took her to catch her breath, the vixen had lost what she was so sure she loved. Inhaling deeply she shut her eyes to the cloudless night sky. Sleep was sneaking up on her, but she would gladly stay out until the sun crept above the skyline if it meant spending more time with the fox she had met that night.

“Miles,” Fiona asked softly.

Only the sound of a car passing by on the streets below responded. When she looked to her right, the place the kit had been laying only a few moments ago was empty. Without so much as a goodbye or a kiss goodnight the two tailed fox had all but dematerialized. There wasn’t a solitary trace of him or where he had gone. Fiona got to her feet, listening for his tell tale footsteps and smelling for his lingering fragrance.

“Miles,” she called out again, still confused as to how he could have just left her there.

“Show off,” the vixen said out loud, now frustrated that someone was even more mysterious than her. The red shadow had fancied herself as quiet as darkness itself, but to disappear into thin air was a feat she had not yet conquered.

“What did you expect Fi?” The fox asked herself as she found the stairs on the fire escape. “He is part of the Resistance, he doesn’t have time for you.”

For the first time in recent memory the vixen found herself fighting back tears. It wasn’t like her to let something as trivial as another Mobian get under her skin. She knew better than to let someone else in. Even at just two blocks, the walk back to the tavern felt like a marathon. Her heart pounded against her chest, trying desperately to tell her something, but it was a muscel she had become unfamiliar with.

The bell above the door snapped her back into existence as she wandered back into the Barn Yard. There was no one left save for the wolf still unconscious on the floor and her fellow employees. They eyed her with large grins on their faces, no doubt trying to contain themselves.

“That was awfully quick. Didn’t think we would see you until tomorrow,” Mina said doubling the size of a smirk Fiona already wanted to slap off her face.

The vixen collapsed onto a bar stool doing her best to ignore the other girls. They were immature and only saw what they wanted to see.

“Tired?” Blaze asked playfully. “I can’t imagine he was easy to keep up with.”

They were getting close to crossing the line. In her time working for Ixis, she was confident no one had ever seen her angry. She was bottling that up for a special day, but they were getting close to a free sample.

“Oh c’mon Fi, you need to give us something here. How was he?” the mongoose asked as she wiped down the counter in front of her.

The fox raised her eyebrows as if to ask if it was a serious question.

“Yeah,” the feline chimed in giddily, “I mean Miles Prower. Wow that’s so cool.”

When she didn’t respond to their banter, the pair finally put it together that perhaps something was wrong.

“Fi?” Blazed asked now sounding concerned, “Are you okay?”

“He just left,” she finally sighed.

“They always do,” Mina replied trying to comfort her, “I mean what did you expect from a Freedom Fighter?”

Just like Miles, they clearly didn’t know her very well. Fiona couldn’t find the energy to tell them she hadn’t slept with him. It wasn’t surprising to her in the least that was the only thing they could assume either.

“This might help you forget about him,” Blaze suggested as she pushed the wolf’s untouched beer towards her, "I don’t think he will be needing it.”

The vixen, much like the coyote she had met earlier that night, usually refrained from touching the stuff. However, she felt as if the occasion allowed for it. Picking up the warm glass of lager she tipped it back until half of the liquid was gone. The taste was almost intolerable, but she didn’t care. The alcohol worked quickly to dull the pain in her chest and her taste buds alike.

“They are best served cold,” Mina commented after seeing the fox nearly gag.

“Don’t let him get to you,” the cat said sympathetically as she retreated back to closing down the bar for the night.

Fiona upended the mug and polished off the rest of her beer. It was too late not to let the two-tailed kit get to her, but at least she could try to forget. As the vixen drifted deeper into thought, the unconscious Mobian on the floor finally began to stir. Grumbling and moaning loudly he attempted to return to his feet, but was still too drunk for his own good. The vixen had better things to than help some low life, even if those things involved wallowing in her own self pity.

“Come on, Karl,” Mina said as she knelt down to help him up, “Let’s make sure you get home alright.”

“What the hell happened?” the wolf finally managed.

“You forgot the rules,” Fiona said gruffly from her spot on the stool, “again.”

Whether he ignored her or didn’t hear, it made little difference. The mongoose whisked him out of the bar and into the night air that was full of nothing but misery. The vixen turned back to the tap in front of her and leaned across the bar to help herself to a refill.

“Take it easy there Fi,” Blaze said eyeing the tall glass of beer the fox was pouring herself.

Fiona ignored her and instead started in on her new drink.

The fox chuckled when she came up for air, “they are better cold.”

Even after everyone had left, the Fiona remained, cobbling together words that she would likely never have a chance to say to a particularly unusual fox. Just whispering them to herself helped take the edge off, but did little to change the reality of her situation. As the night pressed on, so did she, but it was only a matter of time before her world went black with an alcohol induced sleep. Resting her head on her forearms, the fox couldn’t even remember closing her eyes. What she soon remembered however, was the hangover. The sound of the door in the back room opening jarred her awake.

“Someone had a long night,” Mina said snidely as she approached the groggy fox.

The mongoose’s voice was grating to her ears. Fiona’s head throbbed as she opened her eyes to the afternoon light.

“Like yours wasn’t just as long?” Fiona stammered suggestively through the pain.

“Try to put on a smile, Fi. Your shift starts in an hour.”

The vixen removed herself from the barstool and found the dirty floor with her feet. Nothing about dealing with drunks seemed appealing to her at the moment. The ache she felt was her own fault, and that of a certain Resistance fighter.  However, in the end she did what she always did and took the night in stride. After just a few hours of serving unruly customers, things were starting to feel normal again. Given her luck though, she wasn’t counting on it to last. The awkward glances of her co-workers told her something was amiss.

 “Pst, Fi,” Mina whispered loudly over the ruckus in the room, “Did you see who was here?”

The vixen followed the not so subtle pointer finger of the mongoose over to a darkened corner of the bar. In the shadows sat a very familiar looking two tailed fox. How he had managed to get in without her seeing him was a mystery, but then again she suspected this particular freedom fighter was probably shrouded in them.

“The nerve on him,” Blaze added, but not in a whisper. “Honey don’t you worry about him, I’ll take care of him for tonight.”

Fiona had the strangest suspicion the cat meant that in more ways than one _. If only she knew the naivety of the fox._

“It’s alright,” the vixen responded, “I can handle him myself.”

In her sleepless fit, Fiona had once again organized a monolog of things to say, but the closer she got the more the words faded. When she finally did take the seat across from him, there was nothing left but a blank look on her face.

“Sorry,” the kit began in a tone that sounded surprisingly sympathetic.

But she didn’t want to listen to his apologies, so she made an obvious move to leave.

 “Sometimes it is easier just to walk away,” he continued. “We are not supposed to get… ‘involved’ with others. I thought it would be better for us both if I just wasn’t there when you opened your eyes.”

 _Better?_ The vixen thought sourly, _better would have been you keeping the promise you never got a chance to make._

“So then what are you doing here now?” Fiona asked annoyed.

Miles smiled as he leaned back in his chair, “Hoping to take you with me.”

It was if a bomb went off in her chest and a thousand butterflies poured out of its explosion, tickling her insides until the feeling forced her to respond, “I don’t understand.”

The kit brought paw up the frame on his HUD and the glass became awash in green light, “It wasn’t easy for me to walk away last night. It was even harder to stop thinking about you.”

The vixen tried to hide her smile, but she could still see her wry smirk in the reflection of his lenses.

“The funny thing about these,” Miles continued as he tapped on his glasses, “they can practically read your mind, but there isn’t a lot of information on a Fiona Fox.”

Her subtle grin retreated and quickly. _How much can that thing tell him?_

“Your file stops cold after your thirteenth birthday. Only things in here of consequence are an APB for attempted manslaughter and an attached police report for the death of your parents.”

Fiona had managed to go months without thinking about her mom and dad, or about the man who had killed them, but the kit’s words brought memories she didn’t want flooding back.

Seeing her pain, Miles grabbed her hand from across the table and squeezed it gently, “I know what it feels like to have everything and everyone you love taken from you, but that’s not what this is about.”

The red fox raised an eyebrow out of curiosity.

“There is another file I stumbled across while perusing the copper’s systems. No name, just the alias, ‘Red Shadow’. This person, while they are missing all the personal details, has a rap sheet that is almost as long as mine,” he continued while he read the text streaming across the tiny screen in front of him. “Twenty counts of armed robbery, over one hundred counts of assault, even more for breaking and entering. This shadow person even managed to get their very own classified Dominion file, which isn’t easy to do.”

She played the part of a statue and remained quiet while Miles tried to get a read on her.

“That’s  the type of Mobian we want in the Resistance,” the kit said with all to serious of a smile. “I was kind of hoping you might know this ‘Red Shadow’ because I think I have a job they might be interested in.”

Fiona had tried desperately to bury that part of her life, but here she was being asked to step back into it. Part of her missed running amuck in the city as well as the thrill and excitement that came along with doing so.

“One thing,” Fiona asked of the fox sitting opposite her.

“Of course.”

“Promise me you won’t let me go again.”

With just a small tip of his head, Miles set the vixen’s world at ease. Her mind which had been desperately panting as it swam laps in her head, trying to stay afloat and find the meaning behind everything was now finally able to breathe.

“Good," Fiona said plainly as she leaned across the table with smile. "Now I don't suppose you could tell me what that Dominion file says about me?”

Tails laughed lightheartedly, “I thought so. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You mean why don’t I advertise I am the pet of crime lord?”

“Fiona, you can trust me.”

There it was, the one thing she swore she would never do. _Fi, you know better than to put faith in anyone but yourself._

“Can I? I barely even know you… and after last night…”

The Freedom Fighter bared a whitened smile that was meant to comfort, “The Mobian best known as the ‘Red Shadow’ evaded Dominion custody after disabling the operation’s three lead agents and capturing the prisoner. This was despite every precaution, including two armored SWAT bot units. The subject is to be considered extremely dangerous and should be killed on sight.”

"Almost forgot about all of that.”

“Not many people tango with SWAT bots and live to tell about it.”

The vixen shrugged if it wasn’t that big of a deal.

“They are a problem where I come from,” Tails added. “I haven’t heard of them being used in the city before. You must have really pissed them off.”

“You don’t know the first thing about this city,” Fiona nearly spat.

“And I suppose you know all about what it’s like where I come from?”

She didn’t respond, how could she? The red fox had never taken a step outside of her territory let alone bother to care for those who did.

“Perhaps you would?” Tails asked.

Fiona answered his questions with a look of confusion.

The kit slid the still active HUD across the table, “To know what it is like where I come from?”

Cautiously she picked the tech up, almost as if she was afraid of what it might show her. The vixen's hesitation turned out not to be misguided, the atrocities were endless. Pictures, news clippings, numbers, and dates all streamed across the glass in front of her. Her whole life she had been buried in the selfishness of her city. Not once had she picked up a paper or even bothered to head the plight of another Mobian. Fiona had always assumed where she lived to be the most dangerous, but according to the display on her face nothing could have been further from the truth.

“Julian has been after us for years,” Miles began. “Even before he was president he waged a secret war on us. He used to be an ambassador to our people, but at the same time he was running black-op campaigns to thin out the early members of the Resistance. That’s when I lost my parents.”

The vixen slowed down the speed of the data, trying now, more than ever to understand what it all meant.

“Before that,” the kit continued, “he was just a scientist with a distinct fascination for Mobians.”

The images made her speechless. What she had dealt with in her life was only the tip of a much larger iceberg, one that the oceans of media seemed determined to cover up.

“Come on,” Miles begged her as he got up, “I have something I want to show you.”

Fiona did her best to follow him out the back of the bar while she continued to consume a history she never knew existed. Neither Blaze or Mina gave her approving looks on the way out, but she could hardly blame them.

“Where are we going?” Fiona asked as they walked down the lonesome back alley.

“The wharf.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s clear on the other side of the city and crawling with coppers.”

“Relax, I have that covered,” the kit responded as he produced a large helping of keys and tossed them into the air casually.  “Like my ride?” he asked motioning to a car tucked away in the shadows.

When she took her focus off the text in the HUD a copper’s cruiser came into view. The sleek black sedans were well known and unmistakable.

“You stole this?”

“I like to think of it as ‘barrowing’. I don’t really plan on keeping it.”

“You know they tend to notice when these go missing.”

“Yeah,” Tails responded as he popped the trunk on the vehicle, “they usually do unless of course you have the copper that goes with them.”

Sure enough a man in uniform was bound and gagged in the back of his own patrol car.

The two-tailed fox removed the tape from his mouth and held up a radio, “You know the drill.”

“Unit 34 checking in. All clear. Over,” the copper said with surprisingly little hesitation.

“Roger that unit 34. Over,” dispatches response crackled over the speaker.

After replacing the tape, the fox shut the trunk and walked around to the driver side.

“Coming?” he asked.

 _He knows how to have fun, I‘ll give him that,_ Fiona thought as a smile lit up her face.

“What exactly did you say we were going to do again?” the vixen asked as she got in the front seat next to him.

“I didn’t.”

While the kit had his fun peeling out into traffic, lights ablaze and siren wailing, she immersed herself deeper in the world she should have grown up in.

“It says that Julian was ambassador, but resigned after King Acorn declared war,” Fiona proclaimed loudly over the roar of the car’s engine.

“Right, which is all he wanted in the first place. The only reason Kintobor ever took the job was so that he could earn our trust. Inside of a few months he knew everything about us. That’s when the raids started. Key people went missing or turned up dead. When King Acorn found out the government was behind it, well, there was no stopping him from retaliating. Julian only meant to goad us into war so he had an excuse.”

“An excuse for what?” Fiona inquired as she brought up King Acorn’s file.

 “For systematically killing and torturing us. We are his lab rats. The only way he could sell genocide was if we were a threat, so he made us a threat.”

“It says the King is dead, so isn’t the war over?”

Tails took his eyes away from the road for longer than she would have liked as he sized up whether to take her question seriously. Fiona had no qualms about putting her life in his hands, but he was driving like he had a death wish. Even with the cruiser’s lights on, cars only barley managed to get out of their way in time.

“You really don’t get out much do you? The king is dead, Kintobor saw to that in his first year as president.” The fox answered reluctantly.  “However, the war is far from over, his daughter picked up the pieces and kept things moving.”

“Kept things moving? How? This report makes it seem like Kintobor pillaged half the country side just to kill him.”

“He did and then some, so we just moved into the other half.”

The vixen reached for something hold onto as the fox driving the car turned the wheel hard as he skidded the car around a corner. The vehicle rocketed onto an onramp followed by the freeway.

“Are we in a hurry,” Fiona asked as she took a look at the speedometer that was racing past 140mph.

“No, but since I stole this car I figured I may as well drive it like it.”

“I thought you ‘barrowed’ it?”

“Isn’t that what I said?” Tails responded with a big grin.

Fiona giggled a little. He was showing off, but she didn’t mind. Perhaps she would do a little of her own later.

“So how exactly do you intend on winning this?”

“It hasn’t been about winning for a long time, Fiona. Just surviving. We throw our lives on the line so other Mobians can live a little longer.”

“So then why bother? Why keep fighting if you know you are not winning?”

“For most of it is personal. When someone takes something away from you, it’s not easy to let go.”

The red fox nodded in return. She knew that all too well.

“But it sounds like you know how this ends.  All the data you have says Julian out guns you 100 to 1.”

“Now that we are not out in the open, we are harder to catch. The Resistance has moved the entire battle underground and off the grid. We don’t fight in fields and city streets anymore. Instead our goal is to crimple his resources until that tub of lard is on equal footing. He may have the man power, but we have something else on our side.”

“Righteousness?” she inquired.

“There is that,” the kit answered back as he swerved between lanes of traffic. “But what counts is the will to live. Kintobor will never understand how valuable life is because he only seeks to destroy and control it. Every single one of us will fight until our last breath in defiance of him.”

“Defy him or not, doesn’t it seem futile? It’s not just him, it’s this entire country. They think you are the enemy.”

“Let them think what they want. You seem to underestimate our capabilities. Julian claims to have us under control, but yet he hasn’t made a single public appearance after murdering the king. Why? Because he is afraid. This war is no longer a test of strength and power, it’s about will and perseverance.”

Fiona looked out the window and into the bay as the car streaked over the bridge. She couldn’t quite see herself fighting for a cause other than one that served her. They blamed Julian for everything; the vixen blamed someone else entirely. Kintobor hadn’t gunned her parents down in cold blood, even if he had created the festering environment that encouraged it. The only thing taking on something larger than herself would accomplish would be a shorter life.

“What about Sonic?” Fiona asked as she brought up a file on the blue hedgehog.

“What about him?” Tails asked as he took the next exit at a speed so severe the car left the ground.

“The Dominion’s file says he can move at an as of yet undetermined speed.”

“There are villains, and then there are heroes. Something needs to balance out all the bad in this world.”

“His body count suggests he might be the reaper himself.”

“Have you checked Kintobor’s?”

“Well if Sonic is our champion and Julian the enemy, what exactly does that make us?” the red fox asked as the car came to a screeching halt outside a posh apartment building in an up and coming part of the city.

“Soldiers,” Tails responded before shutting the car off. “Pick your side, not that you have too many choices.”

“You always have a choice. I could just walk away.”

“And miss all the fun?” the kit asked lightheartedly as he exited the vehicle. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

 _You don’t know me Miles,_ she wanted to remind him, but thought better of it. The vixen knew herself well enough to know he was right.

“Who lives here?” Fiona asked as she shut the car door behind her.

“No one I know.”

Miles wasn’t lying when he said the HUD could practically read your mind. Almost immediately a list of names scrolled across her screen, but none of them jumped out at her.

“Come on,” the kit insisted as he bound up the steps and swiped a card through a reader on the door.

The vixen followed reluctantly into the small lobby. There was no one around this late at night, but it didn’t stop her from feeling out of place. Not even Ixis’ habitat was as well decorated. Fiona knew no matter what she said there was no getting Miles to talk about why they were here, so instead she bid her time and followed him up the stairwell. After nine flights, she found herself in a hallway just a few paces behind him.

“We’re here,” Tails said quietly as he motioned to an apartment door.

Fiona didn’t understand what they were doing on the other side of the city. She failed to see how this was any type of job at all. The only reason the vixen was there was because the kit had made it seem important. When the number 907b came into view on the door, the glasses did their work and brought up the profile on the occupant, or what would have been the occupant had it not been unlisted.

“Would you like to do the honors?” he asked as he offered her one of his tech 9s.

“You still haven’t told me what we are doing here,” she responded as she took a hold of the weapon.

Miles smiled as he knocked softly on the door, “Consider it a gift.”

“Who is it?” a somewhat familiar gruff voice called out from the other side.

The two tailed fox tapped his knuckles on the thick panel of wood again. There were not many things as deceiving as a gentle knock in the middle of the night.

“Hold on, hold on damn it,” the man said as he slid chain from the lock and undid the deadbolt.

When the door opened it was hard to say who was more surprised, the fox with a gun in her hand or the man who had killed her parents. Fiona had dreamt of this for nights on end. The vixen had promised him that she would be back for him, but strangely the man proved more elusive than she had anticipated. It made no difference now, he stood in front of her searching for words. Before he found any he opted instead to try and shut the door in her face.

For the past 8 years she had bottled every once of her frustration, anger, and hatred waiting for this exact moment. With a kick that would have easily fractured any bone in the man’s body, Fiona split the door in two as he tried desperately to close it. The man stumbled backwards, retreating from his now useless barricade. The emotion and power that was coursing through her veins was overwhelming. Without an outlet it felt as if it might tear her apart.  She raised her pistol, training it on the murder’s forehead.

He sniveled as the vixen screamed, “You pathetic piece of shit!”

“How – how did you find me?” the man asked through pathetic groveling. “They swore that I would be safe here. They told me not even you would be able to find me.”

 “I told you didn’t I?” the vixen said with a look of satisfaction on her face, “I told you that I would be back. And what do you know, there is no one around to hear you scream.”

“Honey,” a worried voice called from another room. “What’s going on?”

The footsteps of a much smaller person approached until the slender body of a woman entered the pale light of the room. To Fiona’s surprise the lady had enough common sense not to scream when she saw the gun in her husband’s face. _Almost no one will hear you scream,_ the fox corrected herself.

Fiona glanced back at her partner who was leaning casually against the doorframe, watching her in amusement.  When she turned back to the scum that lay at her feet, he was scampering across the floor, making for his desk on the other side of the room.  The vixen sighed as she followed him with no sense of urgency. _Surely he can’t expect this to work._

However, it seemed that he did. The man ripped open a drawer and reached inside only to have the red fox kick it shut with his limb still inside. He screamed in pain as he removed a swollen and empty hand. With a light toss, Fiona returned Tails' gun before reaching inside desk to find what she already knew was waiting for her. The silver berretta gleamed in the light as she tilted it side to side. Her enemy’s weapon was now hers once again. It’s weight and feel unchanged since the first time she held it.

“What do you want?” the woman asked. “We don’t have any money.”

Fiona brought the broad side of her new pistol across the man’s face. The rage driven blow splattered the walls with blood as the murder collapsed all the way to the floor.

“You think I am here for money?”

“If not that, than what?” his wife pleaded in a now much higher pitched voice.

“I want him to understand the pain that he has caused me. I want him to feel what my parents felt before he killed them.”

“You’re crazy,” he shouted desperately. “Help!”

The fox plugged a round into his leg and his cries for assistance turned into whimpers of pain.

“Tell me how it’s fair?” the fox asked. “Tell me how it’s fair that you get to come home to a family after you took mine?”

The man didn’t respond.

“Why?” Fiona yelled at the top of her lungs.

“I already told you,” the murderer replied reluctantly as he looked up from his bleeding wound.

“Why did you kill them?” Fiona demanded.

“Because I could, damn it. I thought it would be fun. I was drunk I… I am sorry.”

The words almost sounded real, but the vixen knew people would say anything when their life was on the line. The only thing she was able to take solace in was the look of disgust on his wife’s face. _At least she knows the truth now._

“Sorry,” the fox snorted. “You’re sorry? You’re not sorry, but I bet I can make you sorry.”

“If you kill me,” the murder said though labored breathing, “you and I, we won’t be any different.”

“No, that’s where you’re wrong. If I killed her,” Fiona said as she shifter her sights towards his wife, “then I wouldn’t be any different than you.”

The pathetic excuse for a human being was now speechless.

“Do you want to know what it feels like to wake up in the morning with everything that matters in your life missing?”

“She has nothing to do with his,” he begged as brought himself to all fours, “leave her out of it.”

Fiona would have none of it. She lined up another kick and brought it right into his gut. This time there was no scream, just the sound of the air leaving his lungs. Defenseless he curled up into a ball, gasping.  Another glance back at the kit behind her revealed nothing new. It was becoming obvious that he was only here to watch.

“Mom,” another new voice called out.

The red fox turned towards the source. The timid tone reminded the vixen of how she once sounded as she approached an all too similar stage. Chilling memories of waking up on a cold sidewalk came tiptoing back from the past as her grip tightened on the gun.

“Please,” the woman begged as she knelt down to a young girl with confusion in her eyes, “just leave us be.”

Revenges is a dish best served cold, “but not this cold,” Fiona sighed to herself as she lowered the silver berretta.

Her whole life she had despised this man for taking her family away from her. Now the fox had her chance for retribution, but at what cost.  Before her stood two innocent people who would have to go the rest of their lives missing someone they loved. The world was full of hate that perpetuated itself by breeding more hate. If she pulled the trigger there would be not one, but two humans cursing her for the rest of eternity, continuing they cycle of destruction. The vixen turned to leave; she had done enough damage for one night.

“Let’s go,” Fiona said as she brushed by Tails.

“If you say so.”

“Thank you,” the murderer’s voice called out in desperation.

The red furred fox stopped in his door way for just a moment, but she chose not to look back. Fiona had let him keep his life, but she was afraid if she turned around it would only be to second guess that decision. Confusion quickly clouded her mind as every possible emotion ran rampant.  The vixen threw open the stairwell door at the end of the hall, letting her outburst echo off the bricks in the confined space.

“Wait up,” Miles said as he ran after her.

A flash of anger took her over as she turned and threw him into the cement block wall, “What the hell was that?”

He didn’t fight back even as she pressed her forearm into is throat, leaving him just enough room to speak.

“I had to see what type of person you were,” the kit answered plainly.

“So this was some kind of test?”

“There was no right or wrong answer, just the choice you made. Everyone has their demons, Fiona. I wanted to see if you could handle yours.”

The vixen loosened her grip on the kit as she regained control of her emotions.

 “I couldn’t do it,” she admitted reluctantly.

“No, I already told you, you chose not to. Even with all of your hatred you still knew who you were. The Resistance doesn’t act on impulse. We fight to preserve life, not take it.”

Tails reached his paw out, gently caressing her muzzle as she tried to look away, afraid he would find the fear in her eyes.

“I only wanted to set you free. To show you who you really were,” the kit said solemnly.

 _Free,_ she pondered as her nerves calmed. It took a moment to realize, but there was something missing now. A hole in her memories, where once only hatred and anger resided, was now waiting be filled with something new. For far too long she had been chained to the thought of revenge.

“Thanks,” Fiona replied as she planted a gentle kiss on the Tails’ cheek. “You know how to show a girl a good time.”

“You don’t have to stay under Ixis’ thumb forever, Fiona. There is no need to serve him anymore. Doesn’t it feel good to be able to make you won choices?”

It was true, it did feel liberating. Had Naugus sent her kill the man, he would be dead whether she had wanted to kill him or not. There was never any decision to be made when she worked for him; Fiona was simply an instrument of his will. However, that didn’t stop her from wondering how free she would be working for an underground organization trying to over throw the president.

“One day at a time,” the vixen replied as she palmed her new pistol. Unlike her previous weapon, she wouldn’t have to give this one back.

 


	7. The First Time

Fiona had never been so nervous in her life. She always imagined telling someone that you were leaving them would not be easy, but when that person was Ixis Naugus it added another element. The fox had every intention of not going out with the following morning’s trash. However, the man’s temper was unpredictable, just like the man himself.

There she sat in his make shift office, listening to the tick of the clock that sat atop his desk. Each new second that passed echoed inside her head like the hypnotic rhythm of a metronome. Not much of his former work space had made it to the back of the Barn Yard, but there was certainly no question as to whose office she sat in. The vixen had fallen out of favor with her owner and while she didn’t botch the job, having his wife killed while she was on duty was not his idea of a commendable action.

When the door behind her opened up, every mussel in the fox’s body instinctively tightened. Miles had no idea how deep her connections were to the crime lord. There was no up and leaving from the life she lead, even if all she did now was serve drinks. It was understood the Ixis owned her, and breaking her leash was most certainly punishable by death.  If she wanted to run away with the Freedom Fighter and start a new life, thne she would have to find a way out of her current one first.

His breathing had grown even heavier and more laborsome with age. However, Fiona couldn’t help but think that there was an extra note of frustration layered in with it. Ixis was never happy to see her, and even less thrilled with having to speak to her. The fact that she had simply let herself into his office was not the ideal way to start a conversation, but it would certainly get his attention.

“I can only assume there is a good reason for you being in here,” Naugus said coolly as he walked passed her.

Fiona nodded. Everything about his demeanor was rubbing her the wrong way. _He should be mad right now. What’s wrong with him?_ Naugus had a habit of appearing to be a reasonable person right up until he stuck a knife in you, and even then it was with a smile on his face.

“So then let’s have it shall we? What can I do for you?”

No matter how much practicing she had done, the words didn’t come out easy, “I want out.”

To her surprise, the man on the other side of the table let a small grin sneak through his otherwise perfect poker face.

“Is it our two tailed friend then?”

Even though she tried not to, Fiona couldn’t help but look surprised. How he could have known was beyond her.

“I want to get away from all of this,” she answered dodging the question all together.

“Do you really think a life in the Resistance is getting away from anything?” Naugus asked as he sat down behind his desk.

The vixen couldn’t muster the courage to reply.

“I am not going to stop you from leaving if that is what you want to do,” the man continued. “I made you into what you are, but now I am only holding you back. Besides you might do me more good by fighting the good fight. Anyone or anything that puts that prick in his place is fine by me.”

Fiona didn’t understand. This went against everything she knew about the man. He never gave something away for free.

“However,” he continued. “If we are to part ways I need you to do me one last favor. Those papers I gave still leave you in my debt by a sum you are not likely work off with your small time job anytime soon.”

This sounded more like the man she worked for. Always with an angle that kept his opponent against the wall.

“Of course, I assumed as much.”

“Do you remember the man whom you took the brief case from?” Naugus asked as he opened a desk drawer and produced an old file covered in dust.

The red fox tipped her head in response. The bald man’s look of surprise when she had stolen it from him was nearly priceless and just the thought of it brought a smile to her face. The pictures inside the old manila folder were the same that he handed her eight years ago.

“It turns out he is also the one who killed my wife. As much as I would like to see to him myself, I can’t go anywhere near him.”

“Why not?”

“He is the director of the Dominion. You do remember your run in with them don’t you?”

“The ones with the big robots and fancy badges that took you son, yeah I remember them.”

“Julian and I are on thin Ice, so going after his staff is not in my best interest. That however, is where you come in.”

“What do you want me to do with him?” the vixen asked.

Ixis reached in same drawer and produced her gun. The sound it made as its matte black finish scraped across his wood desk ran a chill through her spine. It was becoming obvious what he was requesting from her and she wanted no part of it.

“Thanks, but I have my own now,” Fiona replied as she produced her new pistol.

“Awfully flashy don’t you think?”

“Perhaps,” Fiona replied as she tilted the silver Beretta side to side letting its glint catch what little light filtered through Ixis’ windows, “but it has some sentimental value.”

That was putting it lightly. For all she knew the weapon could have been used to kill scores of people, but only two that she cared about. It was an odd thing to carry with her, but it helped fill some strange void. Whether there was still a lingering part of her parents attached to it, or simply her unwillingness to let go, Fiona would never know.

“I could just bring him back here you for you,” the vixen suggested.

“No!” he replied sternly. “This is your job. I know you don’t like it, but that’s tough. If you want out this is your shot.”

“Fine,” she replied as she flipped to the last page of his file.

It had been updated with an address that was right in the heart of downtown.  Nothing about this was going to be easy.

“Make sure you take that two tailed fox with you,” Nuagus insisted. “I want this to reek of the Freedom Fighter’s doing.”

Now it made more sense. If he couldn’t have her, Ixis was going to use her for everything she was worth, which included her new friend and his connections.

“Anything else?” Fiona couldn’t help but ask.

“As a matter of fact there is.”

_Why did I bother opening my mouth?_

“When you’re done, you can go anywhere and do anything you like, but you can never come back here. I don’t ever want to see you again. Is that clear?”

Fiona had expected this. All business with Naugus was final in one form another. It appears her days of doing work for him were over permanently, but at the very least she got to keep her life.

“I had no intention of coming back.”

“Then I look forward to reading tomorrows paper.”

The red fox got out of the brown leather chair and made her way towards the office door.

“Fiona,” the man called out reluctantly as if he was straining himself to call her name.

She turned to face him and the rather unusual look he was wearing.

“Thank you,” he said even though it sounded as if it caused him pain to say so.

Never in all her years of working for him had the man thanked anyone for anything. She wasn’t sure what she had done or when, but it was clear that at some point in her life she had made some type of impression on the man. Before she could respond he returned hastily back to his terminal, ignoring her as he began typing. The fox knew better than to trap him in a moment of vulnerability and rather than speak her mind, she simply shut the door behind her.

Tails was parked out back in yet another new car. This one however, was nothing quite as fancy as a copper’s cruiser. The little light blue hatchback was nearly rusted through in many parts, its innards on display for the world to see. It certainly didn’t turn any heads, but Fiona had a feeling that was the point. She nearly pulled off the chrome handle as she opened the door, much to the kit’s chagrin.

“Take it easy,” Tails said as she got in and slammed it back shut.

After a moment of silence between them he spoke again, “What’s wrong?”

Fiona was still trying to figure out a way to tell him what she had to do. There was little doubt in her mind that he would think nothing of it, perhaps even be happy to do it himself, but this was her job.

“I need to kill him,” the vixen responded as she handed the kit the dossier.

“No shit,” Miles responded as he looked through the photos. “We have been after this guy forever. How did Naugus get this stuff?”

Fiona shrugged in response, “I did my part, but I never had any idea who he really was.”

“Wait, what do you mean you did your part? Do you know who this guy is?”

“Now I do. The director of the Dominion, no doubt one of Julian’s finest.”

“And you have been in the same room with him?”

“Twice, if a cars and warehouses count.”

The two tailed fox laughed lightheartedly, “and what happened?”

“He tried to kill me after I took some things of his.”

“Well that certainly explains how you got your Dominion file.”

“Yeah,” she replied reluctantly, “I guess it does.”

“Come on I’ll give you a hand with this one, it won’t be easy.”

 _At least I don’t have to ask,_ Fiona thought to herself as she sighed heavily.  

“Fi?” Tails asked as he started the car. “Are you going to be alright?”

It felt as if she had eaten bad leftovers. Her stomach churned round and round tying itself into knots as she worked herself up over what she was going to have to do.

“I – I have never killed anyone before.”

The kit missed a shift and grinded as gear as he looked at her with surprise, “You’re the red shadow and you have never off’ed anyone?”

The vixen shook her head, now worried she may have disappointed him.

“All those kidnappings, what did you do with them then?”

“Ixis… he is a deeply disturbed man when he is angry."

“Huh, you are even more Freedom Fighter material than I thought. I don’t think there are any of us who have done what you have without getting our hands dirty.”

“You didn’t have Ixis Naugus for a boss,” she replied trying to hide the distinct twang of fear in her voice.

“Nope, just a slightly demanding older step sister of sorts. I will introduce you to her some time. I think you two might actually get along.”

The thought of friends, let alone family were completely foreign to the vixen, but even just having someone to work with was a welcome reprieve. Fiona did her best to zone out as they pulled away into the busy night streets of Capital City. Her days had grown long, and since the kit had shown up, her nights even longer.

When the car squeaked to a stop, Fiona picked up her head and looked out the window.  A tiny three story brick town house greeted her. She recognized it from the photos in the file Ixis had given her. It was on a quiet street just outside of the main drag in down town capital city. Houses this close to the center of town could cost as much as a mansion in the country side. A red brick pathway led right up to its white oak door where two guards stood on either side. Even this late night the house was lit up like there was a party going on. Light poured out of every window spewing into the city, polluting the darkness.

“What are we doing?” Fiona asked nervously as she eyed the well armed soldiers just across the street.

“I thought we could take care of this on the way home, since it was on the way.”

“We can’t just go in there without a plan.”

“I have a plan,” the kit assured her as he exited the vehicle into the shadows of the night.

“How could you have a plan? You don’t even know the layout,” she whispered loudly in return as she followed his lead.   

 “You don’t plan for the building, you plan for the security. There are more alarms in this place than you can imagine. The easiest way to get in is the same way they do. Trip an alarm on one of the windows and half the city’s copper show up. Put a few guards to sleep, you get to walk in like you own the place.”

“So we are just going to walk in the front door?”

The kit nodded as he stood there taking in all the subtle details. His HUD was hard at work identifying their enemies’ weapons, armor, and height. Fiona laughed to herself. She thought for sure that an operation as sophisticated as the Resistance would surly do things differently. Instead the two tailed fox had the same cold brazen confidence she had. The vixen didn’t have the fancy tech he had and instead relied on her mind. She counted the steps between the side walk and the nearest guard.

"Dont forget about their armor," Tails reminded her, "9's won't even scratch it."

Fiona never had any intention on shooting them in the first place, but that didn't stop her from thinking about how to tackle an opponent made of metal. As it is both of the men had over a foot on her and weighed in excess of a hundred pounds more than she did. Nothing about getting into a physical confrontation would be fair, but she was used to being the underdog.

“Distract them,” Miles said as if it were that easy.

“Distract them? How?” she asked turning to face the fox that had been at her side only a moment ago.

Instead she found nothing. Tails ability to disappear into thin air always left feeling frustrated and inadequate. With no one left to argue with but herself, she inhaled deeply, and began crossing the street, making sure to let her boots collide firmly with the ground. The sharp thud each step she made was surly noticeable to the guards. As her feet found the concrete of the side walk in front the house one of the guards put up his hand signaling for her to stop. Late nights stalking prey had taught her the limitations of light. Stand behind it and it is possible to see everything in front of you. However, if you are foolish to stand in front of it or underneath it as the guards were, then there was no hope of seeing past anything the light didn’t touch.

“This is a private residence, what are you doing here?” the man asked as he took a step off the porch, squinting into the darkness.

She lingered in her darkened space, hiding her tail from sight, as the man approached a reddened shadow. Perhaps he would b e able to make out her silhouette, or the exposed teeth in her grin, but the rest would remain a mystery until he took a few more steps.

“What the hell?” the agent said aloud when his vision adjusted. He raised his gun and called out to the other guard, “It’s a Mobian.”

No doubt the man was expecting a response from his partner, but none was to be had. The silence forced him to turn his head only to find a body slumped against the brick facade. While he was distracted Fiona closed the gap. Reminiscing on Mile’s word she started her swing towards one the soft spots in the agent’s armor. The unsuspecting man quickly found himself gasping for air after her open fist found his unprotected throat with enough force to crush his windpipe. Sputtering and coughing he backed away from the fox as he attempted to fire his weapon, but she was quicker. The vixen twisted the gun in his hand until his grip gave way and before he could cry out, she brought the butt of it across the side of his head. The unconscious guard crumpled to the ground in a heap of steel plating.

“Not bad,” a familiar voice commented from behind.

Fiona turned to find the Tails standing in the shadows a few paces behind her.

“How do you do that?” the red fox demanded somewhat frustrated.

“The same way you do,” he replied. “Hide in plain sight.”

Fiona growled in annoyance. It was obvious the kit was not going to reveal his secrets, but having plenty of her own she understood. The vixen followed her compatriot up the front steps and waited patiently for him to test the lock.

“What I tell you?” the two tailed fox said with a grin on his face as he slid the door open. “Like we own the place.”

“Don’t we?” Fiona answered back with an equally big smile.

The inside of the home was sparsely decorated, as if someone had yet to finish moving in. The rug was muddied with foot prints by soldiers who never bothered to wipe their boots. Following the bare walls up to the ceiling the vixen’s eyes stumbled across a camera monitoring the entrance. Tails made sure to wave in its direction, no doubt who ever reviewed the footage later would recognize him, fulfilling Ixis’ wishes.  

“Hey,” a voice called out from another room. “Don’t you two idiots know how to tell time? There is still another hour before your shift is over.”

The kit motioned for her to follow as he shut the door behind them. Just down the hall another room opened up on the right. The sound of late night TV could be heard as two men muttered under their breath.

“Did you hear me?” one of them growled again. “If the boss catches you guys it’s all of our asses.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” Tails answered as he stepped into the living room.

“Aw shit,” the other man grumbled, clearly not happy to see the pair of Mobians.

It was an awkward few moments as the four traded stares waiting for the other to make the first move. Each agent only had their side arms; their riffles were across the room leaning against a wall near the fireplace.  They sat complacent in their arm chairs, determined not to let their gaze wonder from the foxes.

Miles stepped between them and the TV, “Now we can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

Fiona wasn’t quite sure why he bothered asking. They were Dominion agents, they were not going down without a fight. She had figured out long ago they were more than coppers, they were men bent on the destruction of others. All at once one of them let a battle cry as he leapt out of his seat and latched onto the two tailed fox. Both the vixen and the other guard watched as their partners battled. It was surprising to see just how resourceful and capable the kit was even against an opponent that was so much larger. Despite the armor Tails found ways to bend limbs and inflict pain, but he was still at the whims of a man who could quite easily remove him from the ground. With a brutal charge the agent tackled the fox through a wall, creating a cloud of drywall dust as the two disappeared into another room.

As the sounds of their fight echoed throughout the house, the vixen turned back to the other agent who was making a move for his gun on the coffee table next to him. Having caught him in the act, the man guffawed in embarrassment as he hovered his hand over the weapon. It was clear he was contemplating who was faster, but she didn’t really feel like giving him the choice. With a smooth sweep of her leg she sent both the table and the gun across the room, leaving the guard with only one choice.

Unlike the first agent she had dealt with, this one was not wearing his helmet, so the first punch she landed drew a fountain of blood from his nose.  However, the man was hardly bothered and returned the swing with interest. Even though she only blocked half of it, the vixen was still quite sure she might have a black eye. Brimming with overconfidence, the glorified copper stepped into another punch, but this time she was ready. Fiona had taught herself to use her opponents momentum against themselves. The sound of cartridge grinding against breaking bone was near as pleasant sounding as claws on a chalk board. Once she had control of his arm the red fox forced him to the ground. Every time he attempted to move, she forced the limb even further in a direction it didn’t belong. It was obvious that was trying to ignore the pain, but every so often a small yelp left his mouth. The vixen clamped around his neck with her free arm, squeezing until his deep breaths grew soft and his resistance fled.

Haven taken care things on her end, Fiona turned back to the new doorway the other two had created. The sound of closed fist find their targets and the grunting that went along with them drew her in for a closer look. However, before she could round the corner, a defining gong like sound erupted throughout the house as the Dominion agent flew backwards against the wall in front of her. Miles emerged from what she quickly determined to be the kitchen twirling a frying pan.

“I bet that was part of you plan too,” Fiona said mockingly under her breath.

“I think that might leave a mark,” he suggested looking down at the fast growing bruised on the man’s head.

“Come on,” Fiona remarked trying her best to hide a smile, “Let’s find this guy and get out of here.”

Even if they were deaf, whoever else was in the house surly knew they were not alone anymore.

“I’ll make it easy for you,” an eerily similar voice said from behind her.

Turning slowly confirmed her worst fears; the man she had come to kill was standing behind the vixen with a weapon already trained on her head. Tails emerged at her side, with a tech 9 in one hand in the frying pan in the other.

“This doesn’t end well for you,” the kit said slyly, doing his best to attract his attention.

However, the man didn’t seem interested in him.

“I never thought I would see this red fox again. Two years without so much as a trace, and now you show up on my door step? What did I do to deserve this?”

“We both know the answer to that,” Fiona answered back as she raised her hands in defeat.

“You don’t know what you are getting yourself into. Naugus isn’t telling you everything.”

“That all doesn’t really matter does it?”

The man chuckled for a moment, “No I suppose it doesn’t, because neither one of us is walking out of here alive tonight.”

It all happened so fast she couldn’t be sure what took place. Her vision turned black momentarily as two guns shots went off, followed abruptly by another loud clank. When she found the courage to resume breathing and open her eyes, the red fox found her target clutching the bleeding hand that was once holding a weapon. The metallic pan, which now had a sizeable dent in it, lay at her feet with a bullet lodged in the middle.

“You owe me,” Tails said plainly as he followed her gaze.

She could hardly believe that he had managed to pull that off, or that he had the audacity to try it in the first place.

“Now let’s get this over with before more of these guys show up,” the kit continued as he walked up to the man.

“No,” she nearly screamed.

Both the director and Miles looked at her in confusion.

“I thought you said you had to kill him?”

“I did,” the vixen confirmed, “and I do. Not you. Naugus doesn’t like it when things aren’t done his way.”

Slowly Fiona approached the man as he looked up from the ground with nothing but disdain for her in his eyes. There was no begging, no pleading like there was with the other scum she had dealt with. This man, like her, had looked death in the face more than once and defied it with his will alone. Reaching for her holster, the vixen’s paw found the rubber grip on her pistol. Her hand was shaking as she leveled the shot. However, before she pulled the trigger Fiona first had to decide who she was doing for. Herself? Ixis? Or a third an equally unlikely option, love? Miles stood at her side unfazed about what she had to do. If she was doing it for Ixis, Fiona was still his pet and that didn’t sit well with her. The vixen couldn’t find a reason that she would do this for herself, which left only love, and that was as good a reason as any.

The gun shot reverberated in her head as she watched the man fall backwards. It was the first time she felt a piece of her fade away. She could have stayed and watched the blood drain out of the back of his head, but she had already had enough, the man was dead. As she departed the house Fiona returned her weapon to its place on her hip. It had taken another life, but not one that held any value to her, even despite her conscious’s effort to prove otherwise. The feeling ate away at her insides. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t her choice, because in the end it was. The vixen had said it herself just the day before.

“I could have just walked away,” she whispered to the night sky.

Naugus was a cruel man, but that stemmed from the fact that he took no regards for others or their feelings. Fiona knew that this day would inevitably come, but she had wanted more than anything for it to be on her own terms. Love was just a poor excuse that she could mutter to herself to cover up the maniacal plans of a man she feared.

It was strange; Miles seemed so willing to do all the work for her, to save her from the pain that would likely haunt her for the rest of her life. Fiona knew better though, this was her task and her burden to bear. He hadn’t said a word to her since she pulled the trigger. The kit didn’t even glance in her direction and she wanted more than anything to thank him for that kindness, but couldn’t find the words to do so. There was little doubt in her mind that he had once experienced the same pain and the feelings that went along it. A few moments in the sanctity of one’s mind could help make right of almost any wrong. 

The vixen inhaled the stench of the city as if it were the freshest air she had ever breathed. With each step she proclaimed herself more sure of her endurance despite the pit that was growing in the bottom of her stomach. Fiona reached for the handle on the passenger side of Tails’ car and let herself in. It wasn’t long before he joined her, hoping in the driver seat as if nothing of significance had happened. With a turn of his wrist the old beater coughed itself into life.

The vixen quickly found the crank for the window and helped herself to the wind as the car glided down the city streets. The cool night breeze filtered through her hair as she replayed her new memories over and over until they were like a movie she had seen too many times. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the kit reach for the dial on the radio, but she looked away before his gaze could catch hers. Fiona was still ashamed of herself too face him.

_The Killers: Runaways_

Lyrics italicized are not mine.  

The tune was soft and gently teased her ears as the outside air rushed by.

 _“Blonde hair blow’n  in the summer wind. A blue eyed girl playing in the sand,”_ the song began.

There was just enough emotion to draw the vixen’s head back into the car. The silence of the atmosphere outside had its appeal, but so too did her company. A long stare at the fox next to her took a while to yield a return, but the small flicker in his eyes told the vixen that he understood.

 _“I have been on her trail for a little while,”_ a voice interrupted their wordless exchange.

Fiona let out a small smile. Her whole life she had been on a trail, but she was just never sure where it was taking her. Although she knew if it led her to a seat next to this two tails fox, there wasn’t much that would make her happier. Their car rolled softly down the city streets alone while street lights guided the way. Nothing more than tiny town houses lined the road, their iron bar fences encasing what their residents likely called front yards. She couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel to leave her city.

_“But that was the night she broke down and held my hand. A teenage rush.”_

Reaching over, the vixen put her hand top of the kit’s as he shifted gears. Finally, the small grin that she had been waiting for finally appeared on his face. She may have already left her teens behind, but the warmth of his paw under hers still left her with a surge of emotion and it was becoming apparent that he could feel it too.

The old speakers reverberated with a truth, _“Ain’t we all just runaways, we got time. But that ain’t much. “_

It had taken her too long to realize that living for herself wasn’t nearly as rewarding as she once thought. With freedom came choice, and the choice to put her trust in someone else. From the night she had met Miles until now, all Fiona had wanted to do was run away with him. As much as she thought it was a selfish childish impulse, there remained an equally indescribable feeling that countered it. Every day seemed more precious, and not doing what she wanted was starting to feel like a waste.

_“We can’t wait until tomorrow.”_

The vixen had plenty of misfortune in her life, but the one thing she always managed to do was cease the moment. Whenever an opportunity presented itself, she didn’t hesitate to leap even if she hadn’t looked first.

As the car slowed to a stop Fiona could feel the euphoria of success take over. Finally her life was her own. It could mean something and she could go anywhere and do anything. However, it all felt too good to be true. Her instincts fought her every step of the way as she followed kit into his rundown apartment on the south east side of the city. It was quiet and out of the way just north of the all too familiar city docks.

_“you gotta know that this is real baby, why you wanna fight it?_

Fiona followed the two tailed fox inside; doing her best to ignore the stale musty air within. There was no room for the vixen to judge him seeing as it was more of a home than she ever had. Love was a fickle thing, but it had finally caught up with her. Since her parents had died, she thought the feeling lost on her.

_“It’s the one thing you can’t choose.”_

“Feel free to make yourself at home,” Miles said, finally breaking the silence between them.

Fiona however, didn’t want to talk. Life was full of choices and this one was easy. Placing a paw on his shoulder, she waited until the kit turned around before pressing her lips to his. His tenseness indicated the vixen had caught him off guard, but soon enough his barriers dropped. It was fun to see who he pretended to be in comparison to the fox that lurked just below the surface. Fiona had seen it more than once that day. Still embracing she pressed him backwards until his back found the decaying drywall. It was only a moment before he fought back, pushing her until a bed snuck up behind her. Fiona made sure to pull him down with her, and together they tumbled onto the mattress. The naïve fox was anything but when his instincts began to show. A deeper darker center formed in his eyes, but it did not scare her.

_“I knew it when I met you. I am not gonna let you runaway.”_

As she lay on top of him, Fiona peeled off the kit’s combat vest, burying her paws in the fur on his chest.  His body shivered at her touch. When she made a move to remove her own top, a look of confusion trumped the instinct and the fox quickly became awash with wide eyes. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know what she was doing because he didn’t either, that much was clear. Tails soon enough found a place to put his own paws, to which the vixen had no complaint. His caress was gentle and sent her mind ablaze as she encountered a previously unknown stimulation. All the fox could think about was more.

While he was distracted Fiona found the clasp on Miles’ belt, releasing it so his khakis would fall off effortlessly. She watched with amusement as the two tailed fox struggled with words. 

“Fi, I have never,” he began before she put a finger to his lips.

If he didn’t have to admit it was the first time, neither would she. It was better this way. With a new found courage the kit pressed forward, flipping her over so she was underneath. After that it didn’t take her long to get lost in the passion. Soon, only their fur separated the two of them as they became tangled in more than just the sheets.  Things were slow to start but the vixen was not in a hurry. Her life had been filled with memories she wanted to expel, but this was a moment she would gladly live in for eternity. 

_“I knew it when I held you I wasn’t letting go.”_

When the two foxes were as close as they could be, a warmth filled her that no words could describe. Fiona panted in time with her own heart beat which raced steadily faster with every motion. When it felt like her insides were on fire she couldn’t help but whimper with delight. The sensation faded slowly, but the staggering exhilaration remained. Tails continued to kiss her softly, only adding to the ecstasy.

It wasn’t much longer before his breathing caught up with hers, peaking right before his eyes widened. The kit nearly collapsed on top of her as his own bliss seemed to separate him from time itself. When gravity set back in Fiona found herself lying on her back next to Miles, mewing softly in his ear as she twirled a finger threw his fur. The vixen couldn’t tell if the muscles in her chest were tight, loose or both at the same time.

As the pair lay in silence next to one another, staring at the ceiling, unspoken words exchanged. The kit pulled her in tight, but didn’t say anything. It didn’t matter though; she could still hear the words on his breath. _I love you too,_ she replied in her head even if it was all a delusion. Maybe she did stand a better chance on her own, but something told her it would never feel as good as this did. Slowly, her eyes wandered shut as her body merged with the mattress. It was the first time she had fallen asleep on a real bed.


	8. Bullets, Bombs, & SWAT Bots

The soft snores of the vixen next to Tails filled his ears. She had won a battle he never knew was happening until it was over. Everything about Fiona was irresistible to him. The velvet red fox had captured his attention with her sly smirk and good looks. Now it seemed there was no letting go. Just the scent of her alone was intoxicating and her touch nearly rendered him paralyzed.  All of his body’s senses were conspiring against him, making her his one weakness to which there was no resistance.

As Miles took a step out of bed he had to fight the urge to return to her side. Fiona's aroma had seeped into his fur, making it impossible to remove the vixen from his mind no matter how far he moved away from her. Even the red fox's soft mews beckoned him back to the empty space next to her, but the kit had no intention of disturbing her sleep.  Miles had work to do and while he wanted to include her, that was not an option quite yet.

After finding his clothes in the dark, the two tailed fox stumbled outside, doing his best to ignore everything that had just happened. This was precisely why Freedom Fighters were told to avoid getting involved with others. The feelings, let alone the desire, was more than enough to compromise judgment.  Fiona had caught him off guard. The vixen had appeared to be emotionally vulnerable having just done something he knew from experience didn’t feel right.  Tails had done his best to give her the space she needed, but he soon realized it wasn’t space that she wanted, it was him. By then it was too late, and the kit was smitten with more than just love.

Miles knew he would have to be back before she woke up, or risk never being forgiven. He had already disappeared on her once, and under less awkward circumstances no less. However, he had never asked for this, not that he would take it back.

His paw found the cold chrome handle on his car, and he gently tugged it open, fighting to muffle the wretched squeak it produced. Even worse was the sputter of the engine as it sparked to life again. All the kit could do was hope the vixen was a heavy sleeper. He had seen her in action enough to know she was dangerous and easily influenced by uncontrollable feelings. No doubt his leaving unannounced would bring them out.   

It wasn’t long before his car was darting down the tiny streets on the east side of the city. The red fox it seemed was tired enough to remain asleep amidst his midnight escape. The resistance was infamous for operating in the depths of the night, when their enemies ran scared of even the slightest hint of a Mobian presence. Dominion agents and SWAT bots were few and far between in the early hours of the morning, which made defying Kintobor all the easier.

Tails ditched the car in a back alley, unsure if he would even bother returning to the old beater. It was risky enough driving around, and even more so in a car that couldn’t outrun a bicycle. As he stepped out into the veil of darkness a pair of headlights pierced the night, pinning his shadow against the wall momentarily. When the kit’s vision adjusted and the beams subsided, Miles could make out a small cobalt blue coupe parked even further down the tiny one-way street. If the fox didn’t know any better, he was being followed, but not by a copper.

“What’s up little cuz?” a familiar voice asked as he opened the passenger door.

“Sonic,” Tails answered as he found a seat next to the hedgehog. “I didn’t think you would be tagging along for this one.”

“Sally said failure wasn’t an option, so I got roped in. She is just down the street waiting for us at The Den.”

“Sally too?” the kit asked nervously now. “This must be important.”

All they had told him was that something needed hacking. Just like always they gave him a time, a place, and not much else. For both of the key members of the Resistance to make a trip to Julian’s back yard something big was in the mix.

“You’re tell’n me. She wouldn’t take no for answer. I even threatened not to go, but she just called me a coward and well… that was that.”

The quilled Mobian put his car into gear and began to creep through the streets. Even at such a low speed the exhaust hummed a pretty note that the mechanically inclined kit’s ears could appreciate. The car was fast to say the least, but not nearly as fast its operator.  Sonic was legendary, a myth if you asked the Dominion, but his speed was very real. The laws of physics simply did not apply to the hedgehog. Miles, let alone Julian and his team scientist, whom were itching to get their hands on him, couldn’t even begin to explain it. That however, had little impact on what Sonic was to Tails, and that was his friend.

After winding through back streets in the dim off colored yellow light of the street lamps, the two arrived behind a rundown building. A stairwell disappeared underneath the pavement and into the basement of a decrepit structure. To the untrained eye it was nothing more than a condemned building, however, it was in fact a meeting place for those who preferred anonymity. Sonic parked the car and stepped out into the fresh stench of back alley sewage. Together, the two Mobians walked down the steps and pushed open the door.

The sparsly lit room was littered with small tables and bar that stretched the length of the near wall. Both owners sat at the counter, each named Johny, talking underneath their breaths. They made for odd partners, but at the same time provided resounding proof that humans and Mobians could work together. The small sharp-nosed man was wearing a pinstriped charcoal suit, observing his newest customers with apprehension as he tipped his bowler hat in their direction. Tails returned the gesture with a small salute. The other owner was a lanky raccoon with a pressed white shirt and sliver thin red tie that more closely resembled a fresh gash. His muzzle was well hidden in the shadows amidst the blackened fur on his cheeks. The only discernible feature on his face was the raccoon’s glowing eyes.

In the remotest corner, the telltale trace of a silhouette imprinted itself in the darkness. The pointy ears and small shoulders left only so many choices for the Mobian who sat, waiting.

“Sally!” Tails called out loudly in a near childish voice with outstretched arms.

Sally was more than just one of the remaining heirs to the Acorn kingdom, she was also the leader of the Resistance and most importantly, the closest thing the kit had to family. After Tails’ parents had been murdered, the then only teenage princess found room for the small fox amidst their refuge in Knothole. She had seen some potential in him and treated him with nothing but the love he would have hopped his own parents would have provided.  Now that he was on his own, seeing his older sister was a rare event.

The squirrel turned with a smile to meet his embrace, “And how is my favorite two-tailed fox?”

That was a question not easy to answer given recent events. His mind still had trouble processing exactly how he felt about everything. Every part of him wanted to scream, “Fantastic,” but he didn’t want them reading into anything.

“As good as I could be,” Tails replied knowing it was the full truth and then some.

The three of them found their seats in the darkened corner where there was barely enough light to see the person sitting on the other side of the table.

“Alright, I guess it is about time I filled you guys in,” Sally began in a soft whisper.

“I’ll say,” Sonic replied, making his frustration with being kept in the dark nothing but blunt.

“I have some reliable intel that suggests Kintobor is up to more than just his normal military driven campaign against Mobians. He has his scientist working on some pretty hideous stuff that goes beyond just bullets, bombs and SWAT bots.

Tails had a feeling he already knew what she was talking about. With his new HUD he had hacked into dozens of Dominion controlled systems in his spare time. Kintobor was careful never to refer to anything directly, but the clues were still all there for anyone who was willing to take the time and put the pieces together.

“You mean Roboticization?” the kit asked.

“Yes,” she answered looking surprised. “What do you know about it?”

“About as much as you it sounds like.”

“Guys, the hedgehog is in the room remember?”

“It’s a secret weapons program which sole purpose is to devise a way to enslave the Mobian race,” the squirrel answered.

“No way are they making this hog a slave,” Sonic answered defiantly as he crossed his arms.

“If they catch you,” Tails began, “you wont’ have much of a choice.”

“If they catch me,” the hedgehog repeated as he chuckled to himself.

“Sonic, this is serious. He is still a long ways off, but if he figures this out it means we will be fighting and killing our own kind. Worse is the fact that each Mobian he captures could be every bit as powerful as a SWAT bot.”

That seemed to capture his attention. A disheartened look set in as he leaned back listening more closely now.

“This isn’t something new either,” Tails added. “All the files I have found that reference the project suggest it is almost ten years in the making. He has had one hell of a head start. The only thing working in our favor is some of his lead scientist up and split when they figured out what he was going to be using the research for.”

Sally’s eyes darted around the room for a moment looking for someone that wasn’t there, “Where is Antoine? I thought he was giving you a hand?”

“He couldn’t stomach being in this city,” Tails replied, “so he bugged out.”

The coyote was not a coward, but rather cautious. He had had his fair share of close calls that would have given even the boldest of men pause. The twitchy resistance fighter could always be found looking over his shoulder and jumping at the sight of his own shadow.

Sally sighed, “We are going to need to find you a new partner.”

“Speaking of that, did you get the info I sent you?”

“Yes,” the squirrel responded slightly concerned, “what about her?”

“Well like you said, I need a new partner.”

Both Sonic and Sally looked at each other apprehensively as if they were having a silent debate about who would have to tell him.

“Look little cuz, Sal and I talked about her, but she isn’t Freedom Fighter material.”

“What?” the two tailed fox almost choked.

“Tails,” Sally said in a calming voice. “You know better than this.”

It was a hypocritical statement, but he couldn’t say that, not to her. Sonic and the princess was no secret, but it went against everything they were trying to tell him right now.

“I need a new partner and she can handle herself. I feel like I should have a say in this.”

“You do, but there is no way it’s going to be her. She has a history with Naugus and that man cannot be trusted, you know that. Not to mention I don’t think she has ever seen a forest, which means she has been raised on the lies that Kintobor has pumped into this city day and night.

That much was true. The vixen had been completely unaware of anything that had happened in the western part of the country until Tails had opened her eyes. While Fiona was no fan of Kintobor’s, she lacked the perspective most of the Freedom Fighters had.

“Cut her some slack, none of that is her fault. She only worked with Ixis so she could survive. Fiona is resourceful and as skilled as any of us.”

“Cuz,” Sonic said as he looked into his eyes. “We don’t like to say no to you, but this is too much of a risk, we don’t know anything about her. Letting outsiders like her in could destroy everything we have built over the last couple of years.”

“Were you guys even reading the same file I was?” Tails asked now slightly irate. “The coppers could never catch her and even the Dominion has a file on her, which puts her ahead of half our agents. She has already pissed off Kintobor’s top people, not to mention killed one of them. How is that you guys are not head over heels for her?”

“That’s mostly because we know you are,” Sally said as she reached her hand across the table, making an attempt to find his.

He pulled back and let out a small growl, “So I can’t be happy? That’s your reason?”

“Tails, buddy, you know that’s not it,” his friend replied. “If your heart gets tangled up on this you won’t think straight. We can’t have that.”

It was already too late for that. Tails didn’t know how to tell them, but he had a feeling they knew anyway.

“Can’t you guys at least meet her first?”

“No,” they both replied sternly in unison.

The two of them had taken to being his older siblings, but often times they felt a lot more like overbearing parents.

“But,” the kit started before he was cut off by Sally.

“Tails, you need to end this before it goes any further. I can already smell her on you. Just how close are you two exactly?” she asked eying him curiously now.

The ashamed look on his face did him little favors. He had forgotten about the vixen’s scent. Every breath he took reminded him of her, but like all things that frequent the senses, it got lost in the monotony of life.  It did not however escape his friends.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I am worrying about it. This is for your own good, stuff like this can cost you your life, Tails.”

That’s what they always told him despite their own relationship, and he had believed them too. However, he had never felt as alive as he did when he was with Fiona. There was something about her that brought a fierceness out of him. Tails could always feel it lurking just below the surface looking for a way out. But when he was with her the other part of him danced freely as if there were no consequences or restraints. If he died now, at least he would know what it was like to truly live, but he wanted more.

“Forget I mentioned it.”

“We will when you forget her,” Sally answered.

There was zero chances of that happening anytime soon, so the kit shifted the subject before he drew anymore flack for his affections of a fox they did not approve of.

“What kind of security are we looking at?”

“It’s an older lab in one of the buildings downtown. Standard Dominion security with rotating patrols and surveillance network.”

“Then what are we doing wasting our time planning, this will be a cake walk.”

“Well that’s what I am worried about. If there really is information about robicization here, then it should be better protected. This could be a setup.”

“Kintobor isn’t that smart, Sal,” Sonic began.  “You said it yourself, this is an old lab, why bother with the fancy tech and security.”

“Let’s just hope it’s that easy,” Tails said as he got back to his feet. “Come on this data won’t steel itself and we are running out of nighttime.”

His friends didn’t know about the red fox who was expecting to find him when she woke up. Every second he spent away from her was one spent risking never seeing Fiona again.

“I’m with my cuz on this one. Talking about it won’t make it happen.”

“But it will make sure we don’t get caught,” the squirrel responded in frustration.

“Sal, when was the last time we got caught?” the hedgehog asked as he reached for a high-five with his two tailed friend.

Sally sighed deeply in disgust at their lack of concern and over confidence. Before she joined them, the squirrel put a nice tip on the table. The Den was once of the few places left in the city where a Mobian could safely lay low.

“Thanks, Johnnies,” Sonic said as he stepped back out into the city.

Both the human and the raccoon gave a tip of their head to the departing patrons. The Resistance supplied nearly half of their business, while the rest came from corrupt officials looking to meet off the radar. The duo of entrepreneurs were playing a risky game to say the least, but there was somewhat of an unwritten rule that The Den was a necessary evil and was never to be harmed by the Resistance or Dominion alike.

Tails found himself squeezed into the back of Sonic’s car, having let Sally take the front seat. The kit wanted to hold so much against them, but he knew they were only looking out for him. Without their help, he would have been a nobody, so the least he could do for now was pretend to heed their advice.

The lab in question was a lonely two blocks away from the Dominion HQ building, which made breaking in all the more risky. Most of the street level windows had been boarded up with plywood, while the entrances were left barred and locked. The three waited patiently behind the tinted glass of Sonic’s car for any sign of patrol. However, after nearly a half hour it was becoming obvious this place wasn’t even important enough for that, which was not very promising. More security meant more valuable contents within. 

The back door was protected by nothing more than a standard keypad lock. Tails had been hacking these things since he was ten. With a claw he popped the cover off and set to work mixing and matching the wires to various parts of the circuit board. The HUD he wore could have walked him through it step by step, but seeing as he was relatively sure he could do it with his eyes closed he opted for the old fashioned way instead. After just a few seconds, the LED light on the panel turned a vibrant green and the deadbolt disengaged. The kit smiled to himself as he motioned for his friends to proceed inside.

The air was weeks old and tasted stale. Layers of dust covered everything from the light fixtures to the floor. No one had been here in what looked like years, but yet so much of the equipment was still viable. That by itself seemed odd, Julian and his government cronies were not so rich that they could afford to leave this type of material behind.

“Look at all of this,” Sally said in amazement as she stepped inside from the shadows. “If only we had more time, Rotor would kill for tech like this.”

“Come on,” Tails responded hastily, “Maybe we can grab some on the way out, but right now we need to get to the mainframe and that will be in the center of the building.”

As they filtered out of the small laboratory and into the hallways they quickly realized that the place was more heavily secured than they thought. Infrared light, while invisible to humans was plain as day to most Mobians. A mesh of it bounced around the hallways creating a near invisible fence. Each beam swept side to side in a random pattern making it impossible to predict a path. The only thing that would get them through was speed.

“Sonic, you’re up,” the fox remarked as he eyed what would have been close to impossible for even him to do.

The hedgehog was stretching out his calves as he tried to make a show out of limbering up. Sonic was famous for craving attention and pined for any ounce he could get.

“Take your time, we aren’t in any hurry,” Sally said sarcastically as she handed him a PDA loaded with their AI, Nicole.

“Do you see this shit?” he asked as he motioned to the security net. “By all means go ahead if you think you can do this without stretching first.”

Tails snickered as he watched Sally role her eyes at the arrogant hedgehog. However, there wasn’t much to roll them at. In just the time it took to blink he faded and repapered a few feet away as he bent underneath one of the mobile infrared beams. The process repeated as made his way down the hall, vanishing and materializing a few feet away as he navigated the maze of counter measures. Eventually he disappeared out of site and around a corner, but it wasn’t much longer before the security net flickered off and the hallway was once again safe to cross.

“Why do they even bother when they know we can see it?” Tails asked as he and Sally walked down the corridor.

“Well unless we have him and Nicole we still can’t get in can we?”

The fox shrugged in response. The panels to turn off this type of security generally weren’t on the networks which means it had to be hacked in person just like the key pad at the front door.

Sonic was waiting around the corner, flipping a handheld device into the air.

“Caution,” the device complained in a semi feminine robotic voice, “Inertia sensors are detecting non-ideal conditions.”

“Sonic!” Sally scolded the hedgehog. “Stop that.”

Nicole was invaluable in so many ways. The mysterious AI was in every way as fragile as a life. The computer she lived on was her body, if it died, so too did she.

“Relax Sal, your calculator is fine.”

Sonic did not appreciate technology in the least, even if it was there to help him. The only reason he ever bothered dealing with Nicole was so that he could hack through security systems such as this. Once on the local network there wasn’t many firewalls she couldn’t make short order of. However, accessing the files they were after remotely would raise all types of flags. They would need direct access to the terminal to get what they needed and get out clean.

The glass enclosure in the center of the room was filled with servers that hummed into the silence. Flashing lights pulsated signaling the life that still existed within the computers. With just a few words muttered in Nicole’s direction, the lock for the server room disengaged and the three walked in like it hadn’t been locked at all.

Tails cracked his knuckles as he sat down in front of the keyboard. Like Sonic, he didn’t mind emphasizing his prowess when possible, but on a lesser scale. Login credentials were a joke, there were at least a dozen ways to fake password resets or login with root IDs. In mere seconds the full potential of the workstation was available to him, now all he needed was to find what Sally was after.

“What am I look’n for Sal?” he asked out loud as he poured through the hard drives contents.

“Anything that references something called the inhibitor.”

With a few keystrokes, files upon files appeared that references the word. Rather than analyze them all, the kit had every intention of taking his reading to go. The cunning fox produced a small disk from his vest and slid it into the machine and waited patiently for the files to copy. The progress bar crawled across the screen as he downloaded the data.

He had to admit, this seemed too easy, even for an old lab. Nothing felt right. Precious data right out in the open and a direct line to Kintobor’s entire network left unguarded seemed too good to be true. There was nothing stopping the kit from pillaging every file on the network, even those in other buildings, and perhaps the Dominion headquarters itself.

With a few more buttons he brought up the switchboard for communications. Tails did not like what he saw.

“Shit, we need to go.”

“ What is it?” Sally asked.

“They know,” he responded hesitantly. “You might have been right, this could have been a trap.”

A huge spike in com traffic was visible the second he tapped into the server. Almost every on duty copper and Dominion agent had responded to the distress call, which meant this place was about to get very busy.

“Then lets get move’n,” the hedgehog responded hastily.

Tails would have loved to leave, but the files, if they were real, had not completed their download yet.

“I need more time,” he called out as he watched the progress bar surpass sixty five percent.

“How much more?” the squirrel asked.

“Thirty seconds.”

Rather than waste his time watching a useless object travel across the screen, the kit raced his fingers across the keys as he did everything he could to buy them time. Almost immediately he made every traffic light in the city green, which would ideally create at least a dozen accidents and hopefully distractions for the coppers. Next he dropped every security measure in the building. Automated laser turrets were at the very least painful, if not deadly.

“Done,” he said as he ripped the disc out of the computer, “Lets get the hell out of here.”

When he turned around he found both Sally and Sonic staring at their newest friend who stood on the other side of the glass wall, a SWAT bot. Its red glowing eyes scanned them, waiting patiently for someone to make a move it did not approve of. With one shot from the cannon strapped to its arms, the glass room they were in would be leveled.

To make things worse, a subtle beep shattered what remained of the quietness between them.

“Please tell me,” Sonic begged, “that is not what I think it is.”

Tails glanced over his shoulder only to find a brick of C4 strapped to the underside of the terminal he was just working at, its detonator now counting down. How he had missed it when he walked in, he wasn’t sure but now they definitely had to move.

“Don’t worry,” Tails responded, “It’s not a big bomb, just a small one.”

“Well that warms my heart to hear.”

Everyone of them reached for their weapons at the same time. The glass shattered immediately as they plugged round after round into their metallic opponent. It hardly flinched in response as it lined up a shot with its auto cannon. The trio of resistance fighters dove forward, through the shattered glass as the enclosure behind them erupted into flames and shrapnel as both the C4 and SWAT bot decimated the mainframe.

The fox’s fingers pulled the trigger on his weapons as fast as they would shoot, but the mech was too well armored to be pierced by such a small caliber weapon. All they had succeeded in doing was pissing it off. With a set of rapid metallic footsteps the robot dashed forward swiping at Sally with a steel fist. The agile squirrel was thankfully quicker than the sluggish SWAT bot, but it didn’t fix the fact they were stuck with an enemy they couldn’t kill.

Sonic became a blue blur, dashing from one side of the room to the other, confusing the mech’s targeting system. The machine strained to aim at something that moved faster than it could turn. When the opening arose the hedgehog tucked himself into a speeding ball, quills raised. Combined with the speed and razors sharp knives on Sonic’s back, the bot was turned into nothing more than scrap metal in just a few short seconds.

“Don’t act like you’re not impressed,” he said standing onto of his toppled metallic opponent.

“Not now Sonic,” both Sally and Tails screamed at the top of their lungs as they sprinted down the hall for the back door.

The sound of sirens filled the night and things were not looking good. Before they even go to the door the first copper burst through. However, he was probably not expecting a full on tackle from an enraged fox. The kit’s momentum sent both him and the man back out into the parking lot behind the building. As they tumbled, Tails struck him with everything he had. His white gloves quickly turned a dark crimson as blood poured out of the copper’s nose.

Standing over his incapacitated enemy, the two tailed fox finally took the time to reload his weapons, sliding fresh magazines to each of his TEC-9s. As he turned into the blinding headlights that were approaching quickly from the street Sally stepped along side of him and opened fire. The kit didn’t waste any time joining her as they turned the van into a pincushion. It swerved rabidly back and forth in an effort to evade the shower of lead, but in the end the driver plowed into the adjacent building, horn blaring.

Out of the back stumbled four well armored but disoriented Dominion agents. Tails and Sally continued to suppress their enemy, but the bullets ricocheted off their armor meaninglessly. Sonic joined in as he brandished his MK-43s. The .45s did next to nothing to steel plating, but at the very least it helped keep them cornered in one place as all three advanced on their enemy's position.

Sonic was the first to strike. Right before the copper pulled the trigger on a hefty 12 gauge, the hedgehog evaporated and appeared behind him. The blue blur didn’t even have to lift a finger to dispatch his foe. Instead the other two agents opened fire on the Mobian, but hit nothing but their still confused partner. Unlike the Freedom Fighter’s handguns, the Dominion agents were packing weapons that could and did turn the man into Swiss cheese.

With one down, it was Tails turn to take them by surprise. With a quick leg sweep he had his oversized opponent on the ground in no time. As the two–tailed fox disarmed his enemy, Sally jumped the third with a tire iron she had procured from the van. The clank it made on his helmet was deafening and near deadly. The man crumpled to the ground as he dropped his rifle.

The last Dominion agent sized up the situation as he began to backpedal away from his fallen comrades. It wasn’t long before he felt himself bump into something however, and when he turned around he found what he feared most, a blue hedgehog.

“Nighty night,” the spiny creature quipped before bludgeoning him with the bottom of one of pistols.

Tails and Sally raced to Sonic’s car, making for the passenger door. When he looked up from the vehicle, it was to Sonic tossing him the keys.

“Treat her nice,” the hedgehog requested with a smile. “She is almost as fast as I am.”

“Sonic, what are you doing?” Sally begged with longing in her voice as she got inside the coupe. “We need to go.”

“Someone is going to have to keep these guys distracted while you two get out of here.”

Tails shut the door on the argument, quite literally. Sonic knew what he was doing, and neither of them had time to listen to Sally question the decision because she loved him. It was almost ironic the reason she said he wasn’t allowed to work with someone he was interested in reared its ugly head so readily in his favor.

The kit didn’t bother adjusting anything and instead turned the key causing the car to roar back to life. The low hum of the exhaust reverberated off the wall behind them, subtly shaking the car. Tails rolled down the window as Sonic approached.

“Sal, I’ll see you back at home.”

“Sonic, you don’t have to…” she started but Tails revved the engine and dumped the clutch causing the car to leap forward in a cloud of blackened tire smoke.

He couldn’t stand to hear her fawn over him unaware that it went against everything she had just preached to him. The hedgehog hadn’t lied when he said the car was fast. Obviously he was obsessed with speed, but it apparently extended well past how fast he could move his own feet. The heavily modified coupe rocketed through the parking lot as the lights of more copper’s cruisers appeared in the rearview mirror.

When he pulled out onto the main street, it was with the back end sliding out as the vehicle tried to keep up with Tails’ directions. He smiled to himself when he looked up at all the green traffic lights. Whether it would make things easier or damn near impossible, he wasn’t sure, but at the very least it would be fun.

As he reached for third gear, Sonic appeared next to him, barely even breaking a sweat. Tails had to do a double take with the speedometer, which read one hundred and twenty miles per hour. Nothing about his ability to run at such speeds seemed natural even if the fox had seen it a dozen times before.

“Swing up and around the bay while I entertain our new guests,” the hedgehog yelled over the pistons firing at fast approaching redline.

The two tailed fox nodded in response before turning the wheel hard and away from Sonic before Sally could speak. Perhaps he would be able to drag at least a few of the cruisers with him to make things easier for his friend. Julian had a habit of prioritizing the hedgehog over the other Freedom Fighters, which is what Sonic was no doubt banking on. The squirrel next to him let out a small yelp as she felt herself reaching for a handhold while the sudden change in direction sent searching for balance.

“What’s your problem?” she yelled loudly.

“My problem?” Tails inquired as he braked and down shifted, which caused the car to bark up a loud backfire. “Have you been listening to yourself?”

The green lights were not helping as much as he had hoped. Traffic was inching along as cars moved through intersections apprehensively causing the kit to have to weave in and out of the random smattering of automobiles. With their sirens, the coppers were more than capable of parting the standstill of vehicles and keeping up.

“I am worried about him, I am his friend, aren’t you?”

“You love him Sally!” Tails screamed. “Don’t even pretend like it’s not true. But yet in the same breath you deny me same emotion because you assume I will make the same mistake.”

The squirrel was only barley listening as she leaned out of the open window, emptying what was left of her Colt .45’s clip at the cruisers behind them.

“Which is why I don’t want you figuring out how hard this is,” she responded with teary eyes.

The kit bore his teeth in response, that should be his decision not hers. He wanted to be frustrated, but this was neither the time nor the place. In the side mirror Tails watched a speeding hedgehog pull up along one of the copper’s cruisers and shoot a few rounds into the front tire. The driver tried his best to keep control of the car, but it swerved too far and collided with a parked car.

“Grab the wheel Sally,” the kit barked loudly. Open roads were his only hope of losing them.

With over half his torso out the window, Tails was easily able to line up the shots he needed. His pistols popped to life as they ejected brass shell casings onto the asphalt streets. Enough rounds found the engine block of a bulky SUV to make its engine catch fire, forcing it to drop back.

Even with Sonic’s help, the number of cars following them only seemed to increase as they appeared from nearly every side street.

“I am sorry Tails,” Sally shouted from inside the car as she swerved side to side.

He knew she wasn’t talking about the driving.

“I know this isn’t fair, but that is the downside of this life,” the squirrel continued.

“One that doesn’t seem to apply to you,” the two tailed fox hollered back over whistle of the wind and the cracks of gunfire.

Another lump of lead found the soft tire of a copper’s cruiser causing it to blow out and flip. The resulting pile up of cars gave them the break they desperately needed. Tails slid back into the driver’s seat, shooing Sally out of the way. Tires screeching he found the on ramp for the bay bridge, the longest straight away in the city.

Now that nothing was in front of them he shifted into fourth and planted his foot to the bottom of the floor. The wires holding up the suspension bridge streaked by as the car’s speed topped 210 miles per hour. Even despite spending so much time with Sonic, Tails could see a nervous look on Sally’s face. Break lights of other cars were nothing more than a haze as they flew by at a speed the two tailed fox had never achieved outside of an aircraft.

By the time they made it across the bridge to the other side of the bay the flashing light of the cruisers were barely visible. Tails flicked a switch on the dash and the car plunged into darkness as every light in and outside of the vehicle went dark. After that it was only a question of finding a quiet place just off the highway so they could watch the coppers drive by. The two tailed fox couldn’t help but steal a glance over the river in the direction of his small apartment. He hoped that a certain vixen was still sleeping within despite distant cry of sirens that were chasing him.

“Promise me,” Sally said breaking the early morning silence, “that you won’t make the same mistake I did.”

“No,” Tails responded in what he thought might be his first act of defiance towards her. “If you won’t have her, that is your loss, but the only thing I am going to promise you is that I won’t let you and Sonic stand between me and the person I care about.”

The squirrel didn’t answer, and he hadn’t expected her to. There wasn’t a thing she could say to change his mind.

“Here,” he said with an outstretched hand, “You probably want this since we nearly died three different times trying to get it.”

“Thanks,” Sally replied solemnly as she accepted the tiny disc. “Let’s hope it was worth it.”

The two watched in silence as the hunt for them slowly ended. The iridescent pulsating light slowly disappeared as the copper’s retreated in defeat.

“I’ll give you a ride back to The Den,” the kit said without looking in her direction, “I am sure Sonic will be there.

When he pulled up, the hedgehog was waiting patiently next to the door of the underground sanctuary.

“What took you guys?”

“Half the city is looking for us,” Tails responded, “and this car.”

“Nothing I am sure you couldn’t handle little cuz.”

“Sonic,” Sally said energetically as she exited the car and ran to him with open arms.

“I am fine Sal,” he replied trying to shrug off her concern, “although a lot of those coppers might not be.”

The two-tailed fox didn’t even bother saying his goodbyes as he disappeared from sight. Just like Fiona, they never saw or heard him leave, but he didn’t care. They had everything they wanted and so did he. With a strong jerk, Tails yanked the door open to his old beater, knowing full well it would be the last car the Dominion would try and pull over. It was getting late, or rather less early and with any luck he might make it back before Fiona knew he was gone.

Tails sighed heavily as he opened the door to his apartment. His body ached from exhaustion and stress. The sun was just starting to maneuver its way over the horizon as the kit took off his boots and found the soft bed sheets. Thankfully the velvet red vixen was still curled up in the same spot she had been when he left. The two-tailed fox draped an arm over her side as he closed his eyes. Even if she would be getting up soon, Tails would take any sleep he could get, especially if it was with her at his side.

Sally had told him that he needed to end things with Fiona, and while he normally would have listened to her, he knew there was no letting the fox go. The vixen had already found a way into his heart and he had no intention of removing her. He could feel how much it would hurt to do so, and wanted to spare both of them the pain. The Freedom Fighters would just have to learn to accept his new partner.


	9. Smoke and Mirrors

Waking up had always been hard for Friona. Sleep, when it found her, never seemed to last long enough to fight off exhaustion and the thought of returning to a life that had long ago lost its luster. Today however, her tail wagged eagerly as the sun bore through the frosted glass windows in Tails’ apartment and battered her still closed eyelids. The brightness teased her with the promise of a new day, but her body remained defiant up until a building excitement forced her upright. The fox next to her was still fast asleep, but at least he was still there this time.

Stepping gingerly from the bed Fiona found her way around the small studio, retrieving clothes that had been carelessly tossed about the night before. Her emotions felt as if they too were disarray, cast from one side of her mind to the other without warning. Fiona was confident that she could try for the rest of her life, but there would be forgetting what she had done the day before. For better and worse her decisions left nothing but more questions.

Whether the man deserved it or not didn’t make it easier to stomach killing him. To her he was just a thorn in someone else’s side. Even if the Dominion had it out for her, they had never caused her any real harm. However, Tails seemed quite pleased about the outcome. Apparently the director was Julian’s right hand man and a long time friend. She understood how even small victories could be uplifting, but the vixen couldn’t find it within herself to revel in a death found by her own paws.

Looking over at Miles, Fiona recalled the other rash decision she made, the one she regretted much less. Two firsts in one night was hardly a record, but Fiona was surprised choices of such emotional scale hadn’t crippled her. She wanted the fox, that much was true, but never did she realize just how far she was willing to go to make it true. Whether it was a compromised decision or the clearest she had ever been thinking in her life, it made no difference anymore; what was done was done.

As she wondered the small flat, her eyes found the kit’s HUD sitting unattended on the dining table. Glancing over her shoulder, Fiona checked to see if the two-tailed fox had woken. She felt guilty just picking them up, but she had so many questions, questions that she couldn’t ask him.

The man she had killed had told her that there were still things she didn’t know, but she had always known that. Naugus was full secrets. However, if she had learned anything from her time around him, it was that a dyeing man’s words were rarely false. _What has Ixis lied to me about,_ the vixen thought as she peered through the crystal glass in front of her eyes.

It still seemed strange that such a tiny device could hold so much information, and stranger still that could anticipate her thoughts. When she dawned the eyewear, the morning’s paper confronted her with grizzly tales of murder in the night.  Much of it was her own doing of course, but at least Naugus would be happy. With a few blinks she had diverted herself off on a wild goose chase, investigating a man who no longer existed because of her. If she paused on a thought too long the HUD would shift the flow of information, pulling up data about what ever she was deliberating. It was a never-ending circle of new information. Each fact opened up a dozen more doors, yet she could only go through one at a time.

What could have taken her months of detective work played out right before her in just seconds. Bank documents, crime scene photos, and audio recordings. The secret life of two men was suddenly less secret. The man whom she had most closely regarded as a father was now starting to appear to be the monster she had always been told and knew he was.

Ixis was one of the few private donors who had funded her parent’s killer’s defense. With just a few well-placed bribes, Nagus made sure the murderer went free.  It was more than likely he had helped hide him away too. Suddenly the smile and on Ixis’ face the day she show up at his hotel made sense. Life was hardly more than a game to him. Naugus had lied to her face every single day that she worked for him, all while acting as if he was the only thing keeping her alive and happy.

Making her way into the kitchen, Fiona continued to read the infinite amounts of information available to her. It seemed that nothing more than greed drove the twisted man. Black Markets only did well in times of corruption and war. Naugus sought to fuel the conflict between the Mobians and the humans at every turn, knowing that each would have to turn to him for the more questionable products and services he provided. Helping her parent’s murderer was just one more chance to deepen the divide. No doubt he saw adopting Fiona as an unforeseen bonus.

The vixen’s ears could make out the sheet rustling as she poked her head through covert after covert.

“You won’t find anything,” Miles called out grumbling. “Not anything worth eating anyway.”

Fiona let out a sigh, she was starting to miss working for a man who made sure she was well fed, even if he was a monster. Her belly growled in complaint as she shut another empty cabinet.

“We can get food on the way,” the kit continued as she turned back to face the two-tailed fox.

“On the way to what?”

“Remember that job I thought you might like?”

Fiona nodded her head as she took a seat on the mattress next to him.  

“Well, that would be today.”

“Are you going to give me any clues or is this going to be another ‘surprise’ too?”

“How well did Ixis pay you?” Miles asked with a smile curling up his muzzle.

“On my first job he handed me a couple thousand, but I never saw money like that again.”

“How does a couple hundred thousand sound?”

“What are we doing, robbing a bank?” Fiona asked sarcastically.

“Yes actually, that is exactly what we are doing,” the kit yelped through a yawn as he stretched his hands above his head. His eyes were still bloodshot, almost as if he hadn’t gotten any sleep at all.

It was becoming difficult to wrap her mind around the life Tails led. There was never a dull moment when he wasn’t charging recklessly into the unknown, but perhaps that’s what she liked about him. Working for Ixis never felt like it was for a small time operation, but Miles and the Resistance were starting to make him look insignificant by comparison. Their resources and skill vastly outnumbered his, but then again Naugus didn’t have an entire government opposing him.

“We can go as soon as I find…”

“These?” Fiona cut him off as she tossed his pant so that they landed squarely on his head.

The kit smiled as he pulled the garment from face. Although something about it didn’t sit well with her. Just beneath its surface sat pain that was not there the night before. There was hesitation in all of his words, as if he wanted to push her away, but couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“Read anything good?” the kit inquired as he reached for the HUD atop her head.

The vixen nodded as. She did her best to consume as much information as she could be his fingers found the frame of the device.

“What are you reading about him for?” Tails asked as he put the computer on.

“Just curious I guess.”

His paw found hers, giving it a gentle squeeze. The gesture was comforting, but it did little to quell the pain that still lurked in the bottom of her now empty stomach.

Fiona tried to ignore the fact that the car had been parked in the opposite direction the night before. If Miles had left, he was certainly smart enough to return, and smarter still for not mentioning it. Part of her wanted to ask, but because the answer was not likely to please her, she let it go.

The city looked different in the morning. A feint haze of morning dew clung to the lower atmosphere as they rolled through the sparsely populated streets. Everything seemed less tense in the earlier hours. It was not uncommon for her to work late into the nights, and subsequently sleep half the day away. Shadows were few and far between when the sun was in the sky. Darkness, she decided, suited her better.

“If Sonic knew we were stopping here,” Tails chuckled as he pulled up to a small silver street cart. “There would be no end to his jealousy.”

Fiona watched with a staunch look of amusement as the older portly man underneath a tiny umbrella unseated himself and approached the rusty car. Miles rolled down the window with the hand crank and called out to what she now guessed was a friend.

“Hank,” the kit said casually.

“Was wondering when I would be see’n one o you again.” Leaning down to peer into the window he continued when he caught site of the second fox in the vehicle, “Mmm looky here Tails got himself a girl, a pretty one too.”

The vixen couldn’t help but blush. Comments, at least verbal ones, were hard to come by. Long suggestive stares from those passing by were flattering, but in a different way that rubbed her fur in the wrong direction.

“Fiona,” she replied.

He waved her off, “I don’t like to know the real names of my customers. You look like a Red to me.”

 _He is half right,_ she thought.

“What’l it be?” the man asked of the two Mobians.

“Two of the usual,” Miles answered as he held out a hundred dollar bill.

“You pay me too damn much,” the street vendor replied even as he happily took the money.

The savory smell of a tangy meat wafted through the air when the street cart was opened. Her mouth watered in anticipation of whatever was about to be given to her. However, her expectations were sadly let down when Miles handed her foot long hot dog covered in chili. By no means was it the kind of breakfast she had expected.

“Just try it,” the two-tailed fox insisted.

Nervously the vixen took a bite only to find that her fears were unfounded. Something about the classically common food was more than perfect. The bun was soft, the meat moist, and the chili flawlessly spiced. A flavor fusion that was satisfying and filling.

“This is damn near the best thing I have ever eaten,” she exclaimed after finally taking a breath.

“They all say that,” Hank replied as he crossed him arms and returned to his chair and waved to the two of them.

Tails did his best to shift in-between large bites. He made no effort to keep himself or his car clean in the process. Instead chunks of chili stained anything and everything.

For what seemed like hours they aimlessly roamed the streets, occasionally crossing into her home turf. Just when it felt like she couldn’t take staring out the window any longer, the kit turned the car into a parking structure. The high-pitched noise of the wheel bearings going bad echoed obnoxiously off the cement ceiling as they made their way to the roof. Six floors up nothing but the sky was left over their heads.

Just two parking spaces down a red hedgehog and white koala sat on the trunk of a car with their arms crossed. Fiona could only assume that it was no accident they had parked here as well.

“Partners in crime?” she asked motioning to the other Mobians.

“Indeed. We always work in pairs of two. My partner bailed on me, that’s where you come in,” Tails answered as he exited the vehicle.

There was a lot of tension in the air as the two-tailed fox approached the other Freedom Fighters. The vixen kept her space, following a few steps behind him unsure of what to make of the situation.

“You’re late,” the hedgehog quipped sharply as he tapped his foot against the side of the vehicle.

Tails glanced at his watch and raised an eyebrow to question the accusation.

“I just assumed that Miles Prower would show up a little early for these types of things.”

The koala nodded in agreement as she peered around nervously for any onlookers.

“Swift I presume?” Miles asked of the quilled Mobian with an outstretched hand.

“The one and only,” he answered as he shook the fox’s hand.

“And you must be Barby?” Tails said turning to the white furred bear.

“A pleasure to meet you Mr. Prower,” she answered in a strange accent that Fiona could not place.

“Call me Tails, please.”

The kit had told her that all his friends called him that. Yet these two didn’t, that seemed odd to her.

“Don’t you all know each other already?” she asked out loud while stepping forward.

“Only by reputation it seems,” Tails answered. “The resistance has a lot agents that get paired up for all types of missions. I guess we are the most well suited to the task.”

“And who might you be?” Swift asked cautiously as he eyed the red fox. “You certainly don’t look like a coyote.”

“Or an Antoine,” Barby added snidely.

“Fiona,” the vixen replied bashfully as she reached a hand out to greet them.

Neither seemed to keen on accepting her friendship.

“I had to find a last minute replacement. She is good I promise.”

“If it were anyone but you telling me that, I would already be out of here,” the crimson hedgehog answered as he popped the trunk of his car and reached in for a black duffel bag. “I am assuming you have filled her in.”

“Not quite,” Tails answered as he turned to Fiona. “We are running a standard smoke and mirrors heist.

At least they were talking a language she understood. While she never was afforded the luxury of a partner to use such a tactic, Fiona still knew how the play worked.

“Who’s the smoke?”

“We are,” the koala answered, “So be quick about it. We are up first for the shooting gallery if things get out of control.”

“Then what are we grabbing?” the vixen asked as she turned the two tailed fox.

“Money of course, it’s a bank.”

Something told her that wasn’t the whole truth, but she had learned well enough that it would come out soon enough. The kit enjoyed being mysterious, and she would be lying to herself if she weren’t willing to admit that it didn’t entertain her. 

“What do you say we get this show on the road?” Swift asked, clearly annoyed with how much time they were wasting.

“See you ten then,” Tails answered as he motioned for Fiona to follow him back towards the tiny blue hatchback.

In the back was the fox’s very own black duffel bag. She joined him at the edge of the parking garage as they both looked at the building across the street. It was only five stories high, leaving them with a clear view of its roof. More than that she recognized it as one of the few banks on the Upper East Side. The copper’s response time would be slower, if they even bothered to show at all.

“Are we really about to do what I think we’re about to do?” the vixen asked even though she already knew the answer.

This was Miles she was talking about. The fox knew no boundaries, no matter how improbable the outcome.

“Depends,” he began as he pulled a harness of out the bag and handed it to her, “if you thought we are about to zip line onto the top of a bank, then yes.”

 _Why,_ she asked herself with a smile, _did you leave your boring day job Fi?_

Before she even had herself buckled into the contraption the kit had handed her, the puff of a compressed air gun broke the stillness. The vixen looked on as a spear penetrated the side of the building across the street.  Tails quickly pulled out a rivet gun and secured an anchor point on the pillar next to them. In no time at all he had the rope as taught as a steel rod.

“You have done this before, right?”

“Which part?” Fiona asked. “Rob a bank or zip line across capital city in broad day light?”

“Are the answers any different?” Tails asked with a big grin.

She didn’t bother feeding his ego. Fiona should have known that he knew perfectly well that she had never done anything quite this extravagant before.

“After you,” she motioned.

“Not quite yet, we need to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

Miles pointed down to the street below where the other two Mobians were making their way across the street, black duffel bag in tow.  Swift tactfully opened the door for his partner, bowing graciously as he motioned for her to go in before him. After they disappeared behind the tinted glass a burst of gunfire erupted, followed shortly by high-pitched screams.

For all their effort to convince humanity that Mobians were not a threat, Fiona felt this was not helping. However, she had no doubt that whatever they were doing was a part of something bigger than winning hearts and minds.

Without any warning what so ever, the kit clipped himself to the wire and shoved off. The metallic sound of metal sliding over the braided steel wire feded into the distance as Tails streaked across the sky. By now all the attention was being directed to what was going on inside the bank, not above it.

Fiona had never been comfortable with heights, but Miles was depending on her. They worked in pairs, and she was his partner. More than anything she didn’t want to let him down. With shaking paws, she clipped her carabineer to the cable and took a long step off the side of the parking structure. The vixen did her best to suppress the high-pitched cries for help welling up inside her as she flew across the city streets. Tails had already pulled himself up to the roof by the time she not so gracefully hit the wall.

The red fox had little doubt that her partner could see the fear in her eyes as he reached for her hand. It wasn’t an emotion she liked to show, but was perhaps the hardest to hide.

“Come on,” the kit exclaimed, that was the easy part.

 _Easy part,_ Fiona thought to herself as she took ahold of his gloved hand. _What’s the hard part?_

The roof was sweltering in the afternoon sun. She could make out the ripples of air rising up off the black tar paper creating mirages between her and the cityscape. Tails on the other hand was not concerned with the imaginary images and set to work on prying off one of the vent covers before blindly hopping in. The squeal of the soles of his shoes against the aluminum siding could be hear as he shimmied his way down the air shaft.

“Come on Fi,” he called up to her from the depths.

Sighing to herself, she followed him into the vent, doing her best to lower herself slowly. Finding any grip at all on the slippery walls was near impossible. When the vixen’s feet hit the bottom, she crouched down to navigate the small space.  Tails was already pretty far ahead of her. He did little with his words to impress upon her the tightness of the schedule they were on.

When she caught up to him, the fox was kicking in a grate to one of the ceiling ducts. It gave way and fell to the floor below. However, no one was around to hear it. No doubt they had all been distracted by the alarm and the gunfire in the lobby.

Breaking into a bank, even in the middle of day was not half as hard as she thought. The two of them hopped down into the bank’s upper offices. The plush setting seemed reminiscent of the days she spent in Naugus’ headquarters. However, what they could hope to accomplish up here was hard to determine. The other two Freedom Fighters in the lobby were the ones taking all the risks.

The velvet red fox wondered the halls aimlessly as she searched for anything of significance. It wasn’t long before she stumbled across Miles sitting at a terminal in the corner office.

“I thought you said we were robbing this place?” Fiona nearly screamed as the kit hacked away at the keyboard.

“We are, but that is only a diversion. We are the mirrors remember?”

She wanted to chuckle, the smoke was robbing the vault. The vixen had assumed that her and Tails would be doing that. Whatever this play was, it was bigger than he bothered to tell her.

“A diversion? For what?”

“Julian has a lot of money stashed away to fund his research projects. It’s all run through illegal off the book accounts. Tracing them down to their source can be difficult, but very rewarding.”

“What about the vault, wouldn’t it be in there?”

“Not this money, it’s tied up in stocks, bonds, and other types of investments which can only be traded from a select few terminals.”

“Let me guess? You just happen to be typing at one right now?”

Tails nodded with a big smirk on his face.

“Where are you transferring it?”

“What does it matter? Anywhere but here will do.”

What Fiona would give to frame Ixis for this little heist. He spent his days plotting to put Julian and the Mobians at each others throat, so she felt compelled to return the favor.

“You could put some in Naugus’ account,” the vixen suggested.

Tails eyes narrowed, “why would I do that?”

“If Kintobor ever bothers to trace the funds…”

The kit chuckled light heartedly, “I like the way you think. A couple million should do just fine.”

“A couple million! What kind of damage are you doing?”

“Drained just shy of a billion from one of his accounts, but that is a drop in the bucket to him.”

Fiona couldn’t even fathom that kind of money. With a few keystrokes the two-tailed fox had robbed the man she loathed most of more money than she could reasonably count.  While she was lost in thought Tails had made it look like no one was ever in the office. The terminal and its display were off and not a single paper out of place.

“Try to keep up,” the fox said with a smile as he stood there waiting for her in the doorway.

It was hardly fair she decided, as she followed him down the back stairs, that nothing seemed to operate on her time frame anymore. As they reached the bottom floor, Miles reached for one of his TEC-9s. Fiona followed suit , putting a hand on her own pistol, as they walked out into the lobby, which now more closely resembled a war zone. Documents, receipts, and small bills had been flung everywhere while the bulk of the patrons lay on the floor with their hand covering their heads.

One of them however, still caught site of the two-tailed fox. Fiona had forgotten how afraid of him people were. Rationality could and often did take a back seat to fear. A middle aged man got to his feet, sprinting madly for the door.

Tails raised his pistol to the ceiling and let loos several rounds. The noise inside the marble building amplified, and the sound stopped the man in his tracks.

Barby, whom already had her hands full monitoring the rest of the customers, shouted at the now petrified hostage in her foreign accent, “What I say about trying to be a hero, love?”

The guy could do nothing more than whimper as he fell back to his knees.

“Give Swift a hand,” the kit commanded as he turned to look at Fiona. “We only have another two minutes at best.”

Rather than dally any longer the vixen found herself vaulting over the teller counter and sprinting into the vault.

“How nice of you to join us,” the red hedgehog said mockingly as he continued to stuff a trash bag full of cash.

Stacks and stacks of bills sat out for the taking, making it hard for Fiona to get a grip on reality.

“Don’t just stand there,” Swift barked while tossing a bag full of money at her. “Put this with the others.”

It was heavy, almost too heavy for her to carry, but she wasn’t going to complain. With a gentle swing she tossed the bag back out into the lobby so it landed amongst the others.

Pulsing blue and red lights flashed through the frosted glass on the windows. It seems the city’s coppers had finally decided to show up.

“I was wondering when they were going to arrive,” Tails remarked snidely as he strode over and picked up a bag of money. “Swift, time to go.”

“Yeah, yeah, one second almost got the last one,” came the red hedgehog’s response.

The silhouettes of assault rifles and armored coppers pranced across the windows as the Freedom Fighter’s enemy enclosed them in a tightening perimeter.

Fiona had assumed that the copper’s would have taken their time with so many hostages in play, but perhaps they knew the resistance better than they were willing to admit. Miles had told her plainly that the Freedom Fighters would never harm an innocent person. The media however, told every story but that one. Knowing that there was no risk of captives dying, the coppers came rushing in, guns blazing.

With nothing more than their sidearm and basic armor, the first men through the revolving door were of very little threat. A round to the chest would send them to the floor in world of pain. The two leading the charge were met by a wall of lead from the kit’s machine pistol, followed shortly by blast from the Koala’s shotgun.

Fiona stood there frozen unsure of what to do or how to help. Tails and Barby had already retreated to the back hallway with most of the money. Swift on the other hand was still in the vault. Picking up the last of the cash from the lobby floor, Fiona followed after her fellow fox.

Just as she reached him, the sound of gunfire once again broke out, engulfing the bank in loud explosions. The coppers had pinned the hedgehog behind the counter as he tried to escape with the last of the cash. Without thinking Fiona tossed her trash bag to Miles.

“What are you doing?” he asked while analyzing the look on her face.

The vixen turned, raising her weapon in the process, and opened fire. The first round clipped an agent in the shoulder sending him to the ground screaming. By the time she fired the third shot, the red fox was the center of attention.

“Come on Fi,” Tails shouted from across the room, “don’t do this, we need to go.”

Fiona had never worked with a partner, but she was pretty sure you were not supposed to leave them behind. The vixen pulled the trigger on her pistol as fast as it would fire, scattering the already confused coppers. With a long lunge, she dove behind the teller’s counter where she found Swift reloading.

“What are you doing here?” he asked upset, “I can take care of myself.”

If that was the lie he wanted to tell himself, that was one thing, but Fiona didn’t see a way for anyone to get out of the predicament he was in.

“Come on,” she said with a smile as she slid a new magazine into her Berretta, “I’ll cover you.”

The hedgehog nodded reluctantly and on the silent count of three the two Mobians rose from their hiding place, littering the entrance of the building with bullets. The coppers that once felt they had the advantage dove for cover as glass shattered and the stone wall turned to rubble. Swift was quick on his feet making for the back entrance, moneybag in hand. Fiona however, felt compelled to take things slower, backing away from her hiding spot as she continued to suppress an enemy that outnumbered her. The coppers quickly realized that they were no long outgunned and emerged from behind the pillars where they were once cowering.

Discharging round after round, she couldn’t keep them all at bay herself and the inevitable click of her weapon doing nothing soon shattered her dreams of leaving alive.  Fiona found herself alone in the center of the lobby floor holding an empty weapon. At least a dozen agents stared back at her, all down the sights of their guns. Any attempt Tails made to enter the room was immediately greet by gunfire so fierce not even he would risk coming though. Over her shoulder she could see him beckoning her to his side as he whimpered with what looked like tears in his eyes. But surly he had to know that she would never make it there, not breathing anyway.

Defeat was hard to swallow. Her mind raced looking for ways out. She had been trapped like this before and come out just fine. The world slowed down and the noise all faded as the vixen’s mind concentrated on what had to be done.

Fiona did her best to ignore the kit’s screams, “Fiona, don’t!”

It was too late though, her finger had already found the magazine release on her Berretta while her other hand freed a fresh clip from her belt. Before any of the coppers realized what she was doing her gun was locked, loaded and ready for more fun. Dodging bullets was much like performing a ballet, move to the right time and tempo and the performance will continue without incident.

She could still make out Tails shouting, “…I promise you!”

The red fox skipped, slid and ducked between an endless amount of bullets that left her questioning whether or not they were missing on purpose. By the time she had dropped the fourth copper, she had found a pillar of her own to stand behind. When she turned back to look at Miles, the hallway was empty, and where her partners once stood there was now no one. _Did they really leave me here?_

An uncontrollable anger was welling up inside of her. Had she just been some fall girl for their heist? Miles had once promised her that he would never let her go again, and it seemed that he was doubling down on it today. Yet once again he had faded into the ether leaving her to fend for herself when she needed him most.

As the vixen wiped a tear from her eye she let the gun fall from her hand. Even if she tried, she was no longer in a condition to fight. Her emotions had gotten the better of her, not the coppers. Before she could announce her surrender the cold stock of riffle found he forehead and everything went black.

From that point on just mere glimpses of reality graced her senses. The musty stench of worn leather in the back of a copper’s cruiser prodded her nose. It seemed all too familiar, but she couldn’t quite place why. As she forced her eyes open, even if it was only for a moment, it just long enough to take in the scuffed off white linoleum floors. If her head didn’t hurt so damn much she knew that she might actually be able to figure out where she was, but even recollections of the most mundane things were hard to find in her throbbing head.

When the shock wore off and her memory began to surface again, Fiona finally realized where she was. An eerily similar sun bleached desk sat before her, its varnish worn through with years of wear and tear. Papers cluttered its surface and behind it sat a man she hadn’t seen in almost a decade. His face was unmistakable, despite the fact that time had been unkind to him.  The man’s physique had rounded slightly, but he still carried himself proudly. Not many humans had been sympathetic to Fiona, but this one, was at one point, a decent person and perhaps still was.  

“I never got a chance to thank you,” the fox began calmly, doing her best to ignore where she was. “I really did appreciate everything you did for me.”

He smiled, “It’s been so long I wasn’t sure you would remember me, Fiona.”

“There isn’t much about that day that I don’t remember,” she answered.

“I can see that,” the former detective replied as he unloaded the magazine from her pistol. “Glad to see you caught up with that guy. Just like I told you, everyone gets what’s coming to them at someone point.”

The fox was surprised that he was able to recall so many details. Perhaps he was a better detective than she gave him credit for.

“He isn’t dead,” Fiona responded giggling a little. “But you have no idea how happy he was to see me. At least I managed to take something to remember him by.”

“You didn’t do half bad for yourself kid,” the copper said. “I would have given you a one in a million shot for getting anywhere in life with the hand you got dealt, but you did a hell of job of proving me wrong.”

When last she saw this particular detective, it was in the same precinct station sitting in the same chair on the other side of the same desk. The difference now was that he had managed to put a few more stars on his chest and move up a few floors where he could reside in the solitude of his own office.

“I could say the say about you. Captain is it now?”

He nodded, “It is, even despite the nice setback you caused me. Letting a child walk out of here did not sit well with my superiors, but I am glad you did. They would have made a public execution out of you. I am not sure I would have been able to live with myself if that happened.”

“So what now?” Fiona asked curiously. “Can I assume they will burn me at the stake this time as well?”

“Hard to say now that you’re worth more to them alive than dead. Did you know you have a Dominion file?”

The vixen nodded. She couldn’t quite figure out why that was such a big deal to everyone. It was as if she was on Santa’s naughty list and everyone wanted to pat her on the back for getting there.

“I am the only person in this building authorized to look at those. I am also probably the only person who knows your real name,” the captain said he splayed open a manila folder. “The Red Shadow was a real pain in my ass for years.”

“Sorry about that. Not a lot of ways to make a living as fugitive.”

“A wrongfully accused fugitive up until you killed the director of the Dominion. I liked you a lot better when you were retired. Why come back now? Why kill him?”

Fiona sighed deeply. That was a good question.

“I changed employers,” she responded with a smirk on her face.

“Ixis can’t be happy about that. You were half the reason people feared him, including most of my department. The looks on their faces when we dragged you in here with cuffs on your hands; I couldn’t tell whether they were happy or scared.”

“Even if Naugus isn’t upset about me leaving, everyone should still be afraid of him. That man will go to anything lengths to exact what he believes is his. Working for him was just work, working for the Resistance has a little more meaning to it.”

A two-tailed fox came to mind as mouthed the words.

The copper frowned , “You work with the Resistance?”

“Do you really think it was a coincidence that I was at the bank the same time they were?”

“Shit,” he muttered as he picked up the phone.

“What?” she asked him, now feeling almost as worried as he looked.

“Don’t what me. I thought I could trust you, and instead you have been sitting there buying yourself time.”

“For what exactly?”

The captain set the phone down as he tried to find the lie in her eyes, “You haven’t been working for them long have you?”

“No,” she replied. “Why what don’t I know?”

“They tend not to leave a man behind, I wanted to call for backup.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“The phone is already dead.”

“Miles,” Fiona said softly with a smile on her face, “you kept your promise.”

“You work with Miles? Miles Power?” the captain asked now even more upset.

“I did up until you and your gang of merry men brought me here.”

“Is there anything else you would like to clue me in on before we all end up dead?”

“I don’t think so.”

The captain brought his fingers to his closed eyelids and massaged them gently, “I suppose I should just let you go now instead of cleaning up all the blood tomorrow.”

“Well I don’t have any problems with that.”

“I do!” the man screamed. “I let you walk out of here again and my life is over. Julian will find away to kill me right after he has publicly humiliated me and my entire family! Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to worry about that?”

Fiona stared at him a few moments, doing her best to convey the fact she had already lived it.

The lights in his office flickered off just as he finished his tirade. No doubt the entire building was now operating in darkness. The foxes thrived in it while their human counterparts wallowed in its black choking grasp.

“Can I at least have my gun back?” she asked. “It wasn’t easy to come by.”

Fiona watched with her glowing eyes as the old detective loaded the weapon and slid it across the desk in almost the same way Ixis had.

“I suppose I should say thank you again,” the vixen said as she retrieved the Berretta.

“Don’t mention it,” the man replied as he took a container of scotch out from his desk drawer. “Not much I can do now any ways.”

She watched as he upended the contents of the bottle into his mouth and leaned back in his chair. Occasionally a stray gunshot would erupt causing the two of them to twitch with anticipation. Neither could be sure who was winning the battle for sure, but judging the types of screams emanating from outside his door, it was not the captain’s men.

As she gathered up her gun, the vixen could hear the door open slowly behind her.

“My lucky day,” the captain began. “I get to meet both the Red Shadow and Miles Prower.”

Fiona turned to find Tails with his weapon trained on the copper.

“Don’t worry about him, Miles. He is a friend.”

“A friend?”

The man nodded with a faint smile, “I suppose that is what we are.”

“Kintobor will skin you alive if he knows you let us out of here without a fight.”

“I know,” the man replied as he tapped on his chest, revealing a metallic reverberation. “I was hoping you could help me out with that.”

Fiona raised her pistol, centering her friend’s chest in its sights, but before she could pull the trigger he put his hands up to stop her.

“Hold on!” he chuckled sadly as he reached for the bottle of scotch again, “this is probably going to hurt.”

“Like hell,” Tails added.

As he slammed the now empty bottle back down onto the table the vixen didn’t want to waste any more time. Two brass casings found the floor, along with the captain as his legs buckled beneath him in pain.

“Son of a bitch that hurts,” he screamed through clenched fists, “you could have at least warned me.”

Before she could respond the kit whisked her out of the room. Fiona squeezed his hand tight, reminding herself that he was still there. Despite his promise she felt compelled to do her part and make sure she couldn’t let go. His paw closed even tighter around hers as he led her down the hall, comforting her silent fear. Amongst all the confusion, the smoke and the mirrors, Fiona had once again found herself exactly where she wanted to be.

 


	10. Chapter 10

As she turned away from him, the feeling of his heart sinking was unmistakable. Everything had gone according to plan up until now. They had robbed Julian of near a billion dollars and where on the verge of escaping with more cash than they could count by hand, but the vixen was more of a team player than he could have anticipated.  Somehow that didn’t surprise him either. The velvet red fox had whispered in his ear that she was anything but and had only lived her life for herself, yet here she was risking her life for a fellow Mobian she didn’t even know.

“Fiona, don’t” he yelped powerlessly as he felt both her and a promise slip through his grasp.

Tails could see her intentions. The crimson hedgehog was trapped behind the teller counter, pinned down by the copper’s relentless gunfire.

 “Come on Fi,” the kit called after her in hopes that a second request might deter her from what she was about to do. “Don’t do this we need to go.”

The words fell on deaf ears as the vixen pressed forward, opening fire on the coppers. He wanted to follower her, to help her, but what could he do now.  He looked on as bullet after bullet narrowly missed the fox he loved.

At least she had made it to swift. The two of them would have a better chance of getting out alive if they worked together. When the gunfire sounded again, Miles poked his head out from the hallway only to nearly have it removed. It seemed quite a few of the agents were aware of his position and wanted to keep him there. The only thing he could do was watch as Swift ran towards them carrying the last of the money while Fiona stood out in the open suppressing any of the agents that dared to stand against her.

Whether she had forgotten or simply accepted her fate it was hard to tell. The metallic sound of the Beretta’s hammer striking an empty chamber was hard to miss. Miles frantically beckoned her to his side, motioning for her to run, but with no one left to cover her she was stuck. Bullets again tore at his hiding place as he tried desperately to return fire. Stepping out into the lobby would be suicide, and as much as he loved her, there was still more to be done in this world before he could throw his own life away.

The coppers began to close in around her when the realized she was no longer a threat. They would take her prisoner and hand her over to Julian, a fate that someone had yet to escape from. What he did with captured freedom fighters was still unknown, but with what he had learned last night it sounded like they were a necessary ingredient in his research. The sheer torture that would be involved with turning a living, breathing person into a robot was hard to imagine.

The vixen, for a moment, seemed to find peace with the realization that there was nothing anyone could do. That however, only lasted a fleeting second before her instincts took over.

“Fiona, don’t!” Tails screamed at the top of his lungs when she saw her reach for a new magazine.

Capital City coppers took no issue with shooting an armed Mobian. It wasn’t even paperwork for them. If she just let them take her, there was at least a chance he could rescue her before Julian and the dominion got their hands on her. However, just like all of his previous cries, this one too went unheeded. Out of nowhere she became the fox he had read about, the one that was able to do any and everything, the one that defied odds so insurmountable you wondered if she didn’t have someone far more powerful watching over her.

His jaw loosened as he watched in amazement. The vixen danced around the bank as if she could read the minds of the men who were shooting at her. Outside of Sonic, Tails had never seen anyone move so fast. In no time at all she had made it behind a pillar of her own.

It was then that he realized he was crying. Something he swore to himself he would never do. Sally had warned him that this would happen. Involving the ones that you love in his line of work was a recipe for far nothing but bad things.

“Tails!” Swift barked at him, pulling him back to reality. “If we don’t get out of here, we will be sharing a cell with her.”

The kit knew he was right. Anyone who walked back in that room was dead or worse. The window for their escape was closing fast, and he knew that no one would ever forgive him if he didn’t put the mission first.

“Fiona,” he called out into the loud cracks of gunfire. “I won’t let you go. I promise you!”

Looking back again, he longed to meet her gaze one last time, but he was not so fortunate. In all his life he had never felt as guilty as he did in this moment. He had promised her that he would never let her go again, but yet here he was, without her. Like a child she had pulled out of his hand and disappeared into the crowed. Maybe it was an impossible scenario to free her from, but so many parts of him would have felt better if he had at least tried.

Wiping the water from his eyes he ran down the hall, a bag filled to top with cash in each hand. He was just a few steps behind Barby and Swift. The door to the back alley was unlocked and fortunately for them unattended. The tiny excuse for street was cluttered with dumpsters and cardboard that looked older than him. Their exit lay just a few feet from the door, a door to the underground. From his vest he produced a tool and set to work on wrenching the manhole cover loose. With Swift’s help, circular steel  plate gave way. Each of them tossed the money in first grimacing slightly as they landed with a mucky splash. Descending the ladder was hard for all of them, but for Tails it wasn’t the smell that caused his ears and nose to ruffle, but rather the feeling of defeat . Reluctantly the kit slid manhole cover back into place, eclipsing the sky above just guards rushed around the corner, their footsteps covering ground quickly to make up for their mistake. In their haste to try and capture the Mobians, they had forgotten to cover all of the exits, just like they always did.

The sewers were dark, much like the forefront of Miles’ mind. At the very least the shadows hid his still glistening eyes from his comrades. He had seen their looks of pity as they made their escape. No doubt one of the most revered Freedom Fighters shedding a tear would do little good for his image, but that is not what he cared about.

After a couple of minutes in the dark the metallic frame of a ladder came into view. This one however, would not take them to the streets of Capital City but rather the grubby basement of a rundown apartment complex, well out of view of the prying eyes of the coppers. Thus far they had made it out clean, or almost anyway. The stench of the waste water was fresh on all of them, but that was hardly the sensation that nearly had the kit gagging. Every second that passed by was another spent with guilt gnawing ferociously at his insides. If Tails didn’t act soon, he would be hollow in no time.

“Fiona,” he whispered to himself quietly as he took in his new surroundings.

“I am sorry,” Swift began as he let his bag full of cash fall to the ground.

All at once years worth of rage that had never seen the light of the day came pouring out of him. With more strength than he knew he had, the fox slammed the hedgehog into the stone wall. Fiona had done something similar to him once, and he knew first hand that it was not pleasant, but he didn’t care.

“You’re damn right you are,” Tails growled back at him, still holding him against the wall. “What the hell was that?”

“I was fine,” Swift gasped as he tried to catch his lost breath.

“My ass you were. You got greedy even though you knew the money was only a distraction.”

Admits the yelling, the two-tailed fox was still able to make out the subtle sound of the Koala behind him flicking the safety off on her shotgun.

“She knew what she signed up for, same as us,” the hedgehog replied

“No she didn’t,” the kit replied somberly as he let took his paws of his friend. “No she didn’t.”

“What do you mean?” Barby asked as she lowered her weapon.

“She isn’t Resistance, she is just,” he sobbed, “she is just,” but the words he wanted wouldn’t come out.

Even though he couldn’t finish the sentence, somehow he had had a feeling they knew what he wanted to say anyway.

“Then that’s on you,” the red hedgehog answered as he gently pushed the fox backwards.

“Me?” Tails asked almost hysterically, his tears evaporating as his anger flared again.

Out of the corner of his eye he could se the Koala raising the shotgun again, but the way he felt right now, there wasn’t much left to care about.

“How about you?” the kit screamed back. “Do you think you would even be alive right now if it wasn’t for her?”

Swift didn’t respond. He could have lied and said yes, but he knew just as well as everyone else in the room that if Fiona hadn’t done what she did it would be him that was facing the choice of being taken alive or going out with a bang.

“I already said I was sorry,” Swift answered more sympathetically now. “What else do you want me to say?”

Sorry wasn’t going to cut it, it was a meaningless word thrown around to cover mistakes. How often did Julian say he was sorry in his little press releases? The truth was there were no words that would bring her back, so what difference did it make what Swift said.

“I want you to say ‘I will help you’,” Tails answered after pondering the question he knew wasn’t a real question.

“I will help you?” the red hedgehog repeated hesitantly, as he visibly struggled to see how he could.

“Good, because I will need all the friends I can get. Breaking Fiona out of that precinct won’t be easy and we don’t have a lot of time.”

“Whoa,” Barby interjected, “you can’t be serious. Walking into a copper station is suicide.”

Tails, like every other resistance fighter, knew that. However, he had missed his first chance to prove just how much he cared about Fiona, he wasn’t going to pass up on the second.

“How serious would you be if it was him in there right now?” the fox asked as he pointed a gloved finger toward the Mobian he knew to be her boyfriend.

Both Swift and Tails patiently awaited her answer, each curious for different reasons. He had never meant to put her on the spot or test her devotion to the hedgehog, but he needed to put all of this in perspective.

“I – I don’t think I would let anything get in the way,” the white furred bear answered.

“Then this shouldn’t be a surprise to you.”

“But we don’t even know if she is alive,” Swift reasoned. “She didn’t look like the type that was going to give up.”

“She isn’t, but I can assure you that she is still alive,” Miles answered as he tapped on his HUD.

The coppers system lit up when someone answered the long standing APB for the red shadow. The once infamous henchman of Ixis Naugus was now in custody, due to answer for her crimes. However, there would only be a small window of time to get her out of there. If they waited too long, the coppers would just hand her over to the Dominion and then there truly would be nothing he could do for her.

“What’s your plan?” Swift asked with little reluctance.

Perhaps the hedgehog didn’t want to help, but Tails was not going to make it easy for him to say no.

“This is the Upper East Side, the people around here are poor and the coppers poorer still. If there was ever a precinct we were going to be able to get inside, it would be this one. Their security equipment will be shotty at best, and none of them will be expecting what I have in mind.”

“Well I am all for taking them by surprise, but I am not walking into a building full of coppers,” Barby added.

“You wont have to,” the kit replied. “I just need you and Swift to be there to help get us out of there.”

“Get you out of there?” the red hedgehog repeated loudly. “With what?”

Tails picked up a bag of money and thrust it in his direction, “Are you telling me you can’t buy something with that?”

“Fine,” the Koala answered for him, “but you are still going to need one hell of a distraction.”

The feeling of grin creeping up the side of his muzzle was a welcome change. The energy that came along with it finally began to ease some of the tension he was feeling.  

“I have a plan for that too,” the kit responded as he picked up two more of the bags. “Nothing gets people more worked up than money.”

“Wait?” Swift asked, “I know you’re not just going to give that away after we nearly got killed over it.”

“I already told you, this mission was never about this money, and it still isn’t. You don’t like it, take your cut and walk, but I shouldn’t have to tell you that you don’t want to run into me again after that.”

The hedgehog sighed as he grabbed the handle on the door, “Come on Barby, it can’t be too hard to find a car for sale in this neighborhood.”

Her fierce eyes were not easily compelled to leave his gaze. Under the pessimism was pity and concern. As much as he hated that, at least she seemed to be able to feel his pain.

Breaking someone out of a secure building was not all that different from robbing a bank. The ideas were almost identical in fact, the only real difference being that money couldn’t walk itself out the door or hold a gun. Freeing Fiona would be as easy as giving her the means to free herself. A well timed distraction could easily turn the tables on the coppers. It didn’t matter that his plan was crazy, all that he cared about was the promise he broke. If Tails could fix that, then maybe he could live with himself.

Capital City was not a good place for a Freedom Fighter, especially during the day. A fox with two tails stuck out even in a crowed of Mobians. With his senses extending well past his vision he padded along the sidewalk, doing his best to ignore the people who stopped to stare. The kit was famous, but not in a good way, although in some ways that’s what he was counting on.

The subways rumbled beneath his feet, the sound of the train’s breaks screeching as it floated by on the tracks under the street. Even though he had thought that long ago he had become accustomed to the stench of city, there was always the pleasant reminder of the less traveled areas. The new smells assaulted his nose making him yearn for the forest he grew up in. Even knothole, as remote as it was, was more pleasant that the rat infested hellhole that was Capital City. Yet no matter how hard he tried to forget about it, there was an allure to the ingenuity behind it. Even if you craved quiet, there wasn’t a place to find it. Only excitement and mayhem were left, both of which he had become addicted to.

From the top of the rundown building he could make out some of the poorest parts of the city. People shuffled about their almost meaningless lives as if each step they took might get the somewhere. The truth however, was much the same as it was for him, every breath they took only brought them closer to an untimely death.

There were few things in Captical City that were right, but fortunately for the people who lived in the Upper East Side, the weather forecast for the day would be one of them. Sliding a black steel blade from its sheath Tails freed a stack of bills from its wrapper. With a slightly new found hope he watched as the wind took the freshly minted bills from his hand.  When it rains, people reach or umbrellas, but when it rains money they praise the sky shouting high and low.

In less than ten minutes the streets had filled with people, screaming, posturing, and fighting for their chance at some of the cash. When all of his bags were empty, the first of what he hoped would be many coppers was showing up at the scene. It would take them hours to sort through all of the commotion, let alone the source of the money. No doubt when they figured out it came from the bank heist they would be charged with retrieving it all.

“I hope you guys are ready,” Miles whispered to himself as shielded his eyes from the setting sun.

He had sent his partners in crime to find get away vehicle. By no means an easy task, only complicated by the fact that he wanted them to sit on police department after having just robbed a bank. However, the greater difficulty in this endeavor still lay with him.

The fox’s were moving faster now. Tails needed to put as much distance between himself and the spot where he dumped the money. The coppers would be hot on his trail in no time, after all as far as they were concerned he had almost a million dollars in cash, all of which they would no doubt attempt to collect and account for.

As he approached the precinct, the sun was just finishing its final decent. The sky was baked in an orange glaze that wove its way into the glass buildings. Long shadows were now being cast in every direction, finally allowing him to exercise his strengths. Much like the Mobian he was trying to rescue, the kit was invisible in the night. However, it was possible that he was still too late. The Dominion would jump at the chance to get their hands on what they believed to be a member of the Resistance.

The kit brought a finger to the HUD on his face, its contents detailing the latest feed on the police scanners, almost all of which was filled with rioting in the Upper East Side. Thankfully, or at least so he hoped there wasn’t anything about prisoner transfers, in fact there wasn’t much of anything about Fiona at all.

The station was eerily quiet, but there was little question as to why. The fox chuckled to himself as he thought about all of the coppers it would take to quell what he hoped had turned into a riot. The parking lot was near empty, making it easy for him to move undetected to the rear of the building. Miles let his HUD do the hard work and find his next play. The lenses resting on his nose illuminated a dozen wires flowing in and out of a metal box bolted onto the side of the building.

With a hefty swing, the kit jammed his combat knife into the service box and pried the cover loose. Why they left so many vulnerable wires accessible from the outside he would never know, but at the moment nothing made him happier. According to his HUD just a few slashes he could cut the phone lines, their connection to central, and even the power.

Just like that the hum emanating from the high voltage lines went quiet as the receiving unit sparked.  The building plunged into darkness, and his HUDs scanner feed went quiet. A feeling of satisfaction overtook him having so easily taken down part of their network. However, this was the easy part. What he was about to do was the hard part.

The kit calmed himself with several deep breaths as he approached the rusted side door. What lay on the other side was nothing short of a dozen men, armed and trained to hate him and his kind. He was doing his best to suppress Sally’s voice in the back of his head. She would never forgive him for what he was about to do. The squirrel had already told him to forget the vixen, but to take things a step further and involve her in a Resistance operation was a huge blow to her authority. To make matters worse, Tails was about to knock down the doors of a copper station all in the name of love. The media would never see it that way. For every copper that ended up in the hospital or worse yet, dead, at least five Mobians would meet the same fate in some type of retaliation. If Kintobor was good at anything, it was proving that he took things personally.

The rusted lock crumbled beneath the thick rubber sole of his boot and the door burst inward. It appeared as if the back door led right into the break room, of which had its fair share occupants all mulling around in the emergency lighting. It was relieving to say the least however, that not one of the coppers seemed to be able to grasp what was going on. All of them looked in his direction, dumb founded and alarmed by the two tailed fox’s presence.

The first man to reach for his gun was likely the first to wish he hadn’t. In his haste, the man fumbled with the leather strap and before he knew it an enraged fox was standing just inches from him. With a subtle twist agents wrist snapped like a pencil causing the weapon to fall to the floor. With a twirl, the fox flung the man over his shoulder, catapulting him onto table which promptly collapsed beneath the force.

A few coppers had decided that sitting this one out might be the best idea, casually backing away from the Mobian. Others however, seemed determined to prove that they were just as stupid as their friend. With a spinning kick, Tails launched a nearby chair in his enemy’s direction. It caught him in the gut sending him into the wall gasping for air.

The counter was near in reach, and atop it sat a freshly brew pot of coffee glowing a bright orange in his HUD. With a well placed toss he thrust it at the coppers, showering them with the scolding liquid. Their screams of pain would only draw more attention, but hopefully at the same time it would put things in perspective for the cronies. He didn’t want to have to hurt them, but nothing was going to get between him and Fiona.

As much as he tried, he couldn’t stop them all from getting to their weapons. When the first shot rang out, Tails already found himself with a pistol in hand. A stream of brass ejected from his weapon, creating several loud reports. No sane man would stand in his way, especially not after he freed his second weapon and doubled the lead heading in their direction. In no time at all the number of willing fighters hand dramatically diminished, and even those that felt compelled to do battle had retreated to another room, firing blindly over their shoulders as they ran in the other direction.

Rather than relish in his victory, Tails’ feet found another hallway. The kit still had no idea where they would be keeping Fiona, and he knew he didn’t have a lot of time to figure it out. As he progressed into the building he began to feel the backlash of the coppers. Unfortunately, they had found some bigger guns. His belt was already starting to feel light given the amount of ammo he had already expended. Forcing the coppers back with the growl of his gun was becoming less and less of an option. The stair case to his right however, seemed like it might buy him some more time and hopefully less new friends.

The quarters on the second floor were cramped in comparison to the sprawling hallways and reception areas on the first. Cubicles and offices alike lined every square inch, leaving little room to move. Unlike the floor below, this one had little in the way of lighting besides what managed to trickle through the windows.

The first man to happen on him was not near as ready for combat as he should have been. Had the copper actually been able to see the fox it might have made a difference, but Tails’ orange fur slid through the darkness as if it were nothing more than air. With a swift swipe, he disarmed his opponent, relieving the man of the pistol in his outstretched hand. The next strike was a blow to the agent’s gut. Still confused from the initial shock he never had enough time to tighten his muscles, which allowed the kit’s fist to knock the air clean out him. However, that didn’t stop him from calling help in a faded voice.

Being on the order of two feet shorter than almost everyone he fought didn’t help. It forced most Mobians to rely on their weapons and years upon years of hand to hand combat experience. Leaping into the air the fox was finally able to look the copper in the eyes while he brought his foot across the man’s face. The spectacular kick was hardly for show, but rather leverage against a target that was simply too big for him to dispatch with his fist.  When the copper hit the ground he was no longer conscious enough to request assistance from his fellow agents.

Shouts of coordination filled the hallways. The coppers were going to battle for every inch of their home turf, and for that he couldn’t blame them. However, their voices were not the ones that concerned him the most. The corner office at the end of the hall had its door shut, but what was readily apparent was the conversation going on behind it. If he didn’t know better, he recognized one of the voices.

Gun in hand he slowly twisted the handle until door gave way. A tan tipped velvet red bushy tail stuck out from a chair. The fox’s back was to him as she sat conversing with a copper captain. Tails hastened his actions, putting the man in his sites before the man could do anything else.

Looking up into the darkness, the copper locked onto the kit’s glowing eyes, “My lucky day, I get to meet both the Red Shadow and Miles Prower.”

The candor in his voice was almost disarming, but Tails was not about to let that fool him to letting his guard down. 

“Don’t worry about him, Miles,” Fiona insisted, “he is a friend.”

The vixen had insisted on more than one occasion that she didn’t have any friends, and to make matters worse the man in question was a high ranking copper.

“A friend?” the two tailed fox nearly snorted in assuming she was being sarcastic.

To his surprise the man donned an amused look, nodding as he spoke, “I suppose that we are.”

 Tails had run into his fair share of human sympathizers, and nothing ever ended well for them. Julian had long ago made it treason to aid an enemy of the state, foreign or domestic.

“Kintobor will skin you alive if he knows you let us out of here without a fight.”

The captain continued nod as he tapped on the armor underneath his uniform, “I know, I was kind of hoping you could help me out with that.”

Some friend this man must have been, he had already done Fiona the favor of returning her gun. Tails had offered her anything her heart desired, big or small, but she wouldn’t let the flashy Berretta go. Even if she wouldn’t tell him why, he understood why it was important to her, he always had.

The vixen put her friend in her sites as she raised the pistol, but the man was quick to wave her off.

“Hold on,” he exclaimed through a forced smile as he reached for the bottle of scotch on his desk, “this is probably going to hurt.”

Miles had seen plenty of men take a hit, armor or not, they all screamed the same.

“Like hell,” he responded, doing his best to warn the man what he was signing up for.

Alcohol was a relatively ineffective duller of pain, but it was better than nothing. When the bottle was empty, the captain slammed it back down onto the table. Almost immediately Fiona put two rounds into his chest, sparing him the anticipation.

“Son of a bitch that hurts. You could have at least warned me,” the man yelled as he wriggled on the floor.

The kit would have loved to tell him I told you so, but he felt that message had already been delivered. Besides, there was no time. Tails took hold of Fiona’s hand, grasping it firmly as he led her back out of the office. The coppers had made progress in securing the building, and were now doing their best to corner the foxes. However, it would seem that they were unfamiliar with the fact that cornered animals tended not to behave well.

For a moment, they were caught in the beam of a flashlight before ducking behind a desk. An onslaught of bullets followed.

“Can you keep up?” Tails asked.

The grin on Fiona’s face almost suggested that she was insulted he had to ask, “The better question is can you?”

Before he could even tell her the plan, she was on her feet, moving and shooting like no one he had ever seen before. He had to pause a moment and watch her fluidness, the way her hips moved as she karaoke stepped her way through a row of cubicles.  The coppers tried to shoot back, but they were never going to hit anything they couldn’t see. Collecting his jaw and focusing his mind, Tails followed after her.

He was starting to think that Fiona could read his mind. Admittedly he knew that years of this kind of work meant you always knew where every exit was and the best one to use. Tails had slowly grown lazy, letting his HUD do much of his thinking for him. Before he even got the chance, the velvet red fox put a round through the window at the end of the hall, shattering the glass and opening up a path to the fire escape.

Miles could hear the screams of coppers bellowing to one another that the prisoner was getting away. The alley way however, was not any safer than inside. Small arms fire ricocheted off the medal frame of the steps as they ran towards the ground. Freedom was so close, all he needed now was for his friends to hold up their end of the bargain.

His heart raced faster as his boots hit the pavement. An engine roared and tires squealed as a black sedan pulled into view. Bullets filled the night air as he raced to the car in front of him. He could only hope that it was Swift and Barby. The car with tinted windows had pulled up at all too convenient of a time to be anyone else. When the passenger door opened and a white gun wielding Koala stepped out, Tails knew that things were going to be alright. A blast from the bear’s shotgun sent the coppers looking for cover.

Fiona reached the car first, wrenching open the door and sliding across the black leather seat. Tails dove in after her and before he could even reach for the handle, the hedgehog already had the car in gear and moving.

Not even in his imagination had freeing Fiona gone so well. Every part of him was ready to die trying to rescue her, yet it seemed as if perhaps they were meant to be together.

Block after block tore by the windows as Swift raced the car through the Upper East Side. To their surprise no lights emerged behind them. Whether the coppers had given up or couldn’t keep up none of them cared.

“Thanks,” Miles said firmly through his heavy breathing.

“Don’t mention it,” Swift replied as he nodded to him through the rear view mirror. “Besides I think that just about squares me and Fiona up.”

 “I thought that’s what partners were for,” the vixen replied reluctantly.

Tails no longer cared what Sonic and Sally had to say on the subject, Fiona was as much a Freedom Fighter as he had ever seen. More than that he owed it to her to follow through on his promise.

“Fiona,” Tails said between breath, “I am going to have to get you back to Knothole, you might be able to help us.”


End file.
